


dog in the manger

by Saul



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Everyone Has a Cool Hat, F/M, Fast and Loose Timelines, Homophobia, M/M, Mobster AU, Period Typical Attitudes, Racism, Sexism, dark themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-06-08 12:41:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 52,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6855085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saul/pseuds/Saul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1922, and rumor had it Wesninski's son wasn't so dead after all. A sudden upheaval crumbled the Butcher's empire almost over-night; in his place, a scarred and terrifying man threatened to set Baltimore alight. </p><p>Four years later, Aaron Minyard receives a call from a brother he hasn't spoken to in a decade, sweeping him into a whirlwind of corruption, homicide, and exhausted, tremulous trust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. AARON MINYARD

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click [here](http://unkingly.tumblr.com/post/143984261389/so-i-know-the-entire-book-leads-up-to-various) for a quick over-view! Almost all named characters are at least ten years older than their canon counterparts.
> 
> This fic really, really ran away from me. I've tried to be somewhat historically accurate, but liberties were definitely taken (with the time period and the characters - hopefully everything makes sense within the story's context). Almost every chapter signals a POV change, and any additional warnings - graphic violence, nsfw material, self-harm, etc - will be listed in the a/n. Please read with caution. Happiness rarely graces a mobster, let alone these poor kids.

Ranch style, small and quaint, our house came with a tan picket fence and a creaking porch. The third and sixth floorboards from the door were warped and echoed the porch’s age at every press of a foot. Its close walls knew it had been lived in for well over four decades. It knew it had been loved. I didn’t mind waking to our home’s sighing and settling. 

On the other hand, I minded extremely when the new-fangled wooden box nailed to the wall woke me with a cacophonous racket. We only had the contraption for two months: it deserved neither patience nor understanding. But it wouldn’t shut up without either the ringer or I giving in, and the ringer obviously had no qualms about calling so late on a Sunday night. I almost nudged Katelyn into getting it, but she beat me to it:

“Would you answer, babe? It’s going to wake Theresa.”

An upset nine year old being the last thing I hoped to add to this situation, I dragged myself out of bed without complaint and trudged over.

Busy adding the early morning interruption as another reason we shouldn’t have gotten a telephone ‘like everyone else,’ I yanked the mouthpiece from its side and hissed an automatic, “Do you know what time it is?” It would be a toss up on whether or not the receiver caught it beyond static. I really didn’t care.

“I do, in fact.” Ah, a smartass. Great. “Professor Minyard?”

Shoulder pressed against the wall, hand raising to scrub at my sleep-gummed eyes, I at last wondered what in the world someone would want with me at this hour. A few of my students were meant to monitor a recent experiment overnight, but not a Sunday night. Perhaps Thomas thought he’d be cute again and work overtime.

“Yes.” I intoned, grumpy and unabashed about showing it.

The grainy voice paused. It crackled back a little clearer than before, and something niggled in the back of my mind.

“Professor Aaron Minyard?”

“Yes. This is he.” My gaze caught my wife’s form; in the moonlight, only the barest slit of her eyes gleam at me.

Again, the voice cleared further. It held nothing but vague curiosity for me, one shade away from a dismissal. The niggling feeling dropped into my gut like a lead weight and kept sinking.

“Aaron?”

I should have hung up.

“I said I’d mail you.” The voice continues, oblivious. Or. Not oblivious, but not caring. A well-understood feeling of barely feeling. “Don’t worry. I’m not calling just to hear your voice.”

“You’re a little late.” With my throat closed, the words whisper out. I want to hang up. I turn my face away from Katelyn, forehead pressed right next to the telephone box. She can’t see me with him, I think. He can’t see me with her. It’s an old platitude, and it’s childish, there’s no way anyone could see through a telephone, and I want to hang up.

Behind me, sheets rustle. Of course they do. Katelyn could read me with her eyes closed and asleep.

“Honey?” Her voice finds my ears. 

I forget to listen to the telephone, and I don’t ask him to repeat what he said. 

He mentions a birthday, and visiting a relative. She’d like to see us both for the weekend, he says. I must remember her expensive tastes - I’ll need to bring my best suit, and extra clothing besides, in case of summer arriving early. Can I be in Maryland by Friday? 

“Come back to bed,” Katelyn implores, her voice worried. The very sound constricted my chest; even if I’d wanted to say anything, I couldn’t. “Surely they can call back at a reasonable hour.”

He’ll meet me at the Foxhole along Tenth Street at six. 

At that, I hung up.

“Who was it?” Katelyn asks the moment I climb back into her arms. For a moment, it’s suffocating: the blanket, firstly, the concerned press of her hands on my face, secondly, and her weighted gaze, thirdly. To breathe, I avoid the last.

“He didn’t say. Forget it-- he isn’t important.”

Despite it being the truth, neither of us believe it.

 

 

I should have hung up sooner.

On my train to Maryland, my suitcase filled with enough clothing to last half a month, I bitterly and desperately cling to the fact that I haven’t a single female relative left I’d ever care to celebrate the birthday of. The sullen, unproductive line of thinking sees me all the way to Baltimore. Once within the city, however, I have to employ a new tactic, lest I turn right around and return to South Carolina.

Turning over my stumbling explanations about having to go to Maryland for an abrupt research exchange over a once warm, then ruined dinner did not help. Katelyn hadn’t been angry, but she’d been upset-- I had just returned from a conference in New York. Why did they need me again so soon?

I’d hugged Theresa, careful and light, to dodge her mother’s ire. Then I’d hugged her, and gave her a kiss, and smiled as some disappointment eked out of her. There, I’d tipped my hat, turned on my heel, and hitched a ride to the station. I’d spent the first half of the week arranging covers for teaching and research. The administration had been very understanding in hearing I needed time off to attend my father’s funeral. I could have as much time as I needed.

(I’d been one syllable away from saying _mother’s funeral_ , but my throat closed up. Luckily, that added to my plea.)

In an eternity that took no time at all, I stood outside the Foxhole on Tenth Street. Suitcase at my side and hat on my head, neck craned back to peer up at the tacky orange sign, I was aware enough to recognize the embarrassing sight I presented. The establishment wasn’t particularly nice or particularly awful: a non-descript two story restaurant, its claim to fame appeared to be its soda fountain, waffle fries and steaks. Despite this, a quick glance in the windows showed most tables to be crowded, including the soda bar. It wasn’t a place to wear one’s best suit, and yet, here I stood.

My gut clenched and begged my feet not to move.

But I wouldn’t be cowed again by my brother. God above, I would not be intimidated by a _phone call._

(In true Minyard fashion, as Katelyn liked to say, I ignored that he’d brought me this far.)

Knuckles whitened around my suitcase handle, I drew on the face I used for explaining Ionic bonds to a particularly frustrating student, pushed open the door-- it creaked, most likely in agony of being so uncared for-, and strode inside. The restaurant’s din washed over me as I scanned the crowd for a face I saw in the mirror every morning. Though who knew? It’d been over ten years since I’d seen my twin face to face. I’d completed my doctorate. He might’ve finally broken his face beyond recognition.

Katelyn, once upon a time, attempted to coax me into reaching out to him after we’d moved from Baltimore. She’d thought we’d been getting better before we left. Thankfully, she hadn’t insisted for years.

He could’ve died alone in a ditch, and unless someone discovered I survived him and thought I deserved notification, I hadn’t expected to hear from him again. I’d have been happy not to, in fact. Columbia was a good city. Better than Baltimore, to be sure; even with the bay, the smog choked out most color, and the cobblestone streets narrowed hope into nothing. Or so I felt-- but then, that was part of why I’d left.

The other reason I’d urged Katelyn to pack and move away from her parents was the same person I couldn’t find in this _shitty excuse for a restaurant._

While crowded, the Foxhole guests were surprisingly good at giving room to move. I didn’t feel so much as a tap upon my heel as I maneuvered from the front to the back, up the stairs, down the stairs, and, still fruitless, back toward the front. I knew I had to look murderous, my teeth clenched and ears burning. My work colleagues would be shocked to know I had so much emotion in me: well, Andrew would be happy to know he continued to inspire.

Half-way back to the door, a man’s voice broke through the room’s white noise. “Minyard?” 

I snapped my gaze over in time to catch a full-grown man grimacing. _Good_ , I thought, and veered toward his table, catching one patron in the shoulder. _He should be grimacing._ It wasn’t Andrew: he was too tall, for one, and his thick hair had long turned salt-and-pepper grey, for two. But he knew my name, which meant he either knew Andrew or Andrew knew him, and either way, I was pissed off. I didn’t bother sitting down at his soda-ringed table; I let my lip curl, shoulders set back and chin square. He looked a little white in the face.

“That would be me.” My tone couldn’t be bothered to care. At least once a year, it made a student burst into tears at my round-table discussions. “Are you supposed to be my relative? I distinctly recall him saying _her._ ”

He stared for a beat before he rubbed his face with one large hand. I almost dismissed him and made for the door again, but then he waved his other hand in the direction of the chair and bit out, “Jesus Christ, sit down and pipe down, would you? I’ll explain. I know you’re raring to get the hell out of here, but you’re going to give everyone a heart attack if you keep jabbering.”

I stilled, my eyes narrowed. Hand dropped back to curl around his soda glass, he gave me a glare.

The man had backbone. I sat, suitcase left at my side.

He sighed, his broad shoulders drooped abruptly in a release of tension.

In the interest of giving him as much trouble as he’d given me, I didn’t move to break the silence that followed. He eyed me, took a quick pull from his glass, the corners of his mouth tightening in brief disgust. He eyed me again, the glass held to his lips. 

Finally, the glass clinked to the table, and he sighed down at it.

“Jesus Christ.” Again. Fiercer, quieter, “Jesus fucking Christ. I’m too old for this. I need another drink.”

I frowned.

He caught my eye and snorted. 

Apparently leaving me with the dignity of pretending this was a legal soda bar, he leaned over the table, one tweed-sleeved elbow set between us. “He told me he had a brother. He didn’t say jack shit about a _twin._ ”

There’s been enough run-around for the five hour train I’d had to take to get here. “Who are you?”

“Wymack. David Wymack, attorney at law.” He paused, as if he expected me to have heard about some old lawyer from Baltimore. I continued to stare at him. At first he seemed ready to huff and puff about this, but then his eyebrows pinched together and he gave me a side-long look that skittered too close to pity for my comfort. “You haven’t the faintest idea why you’re here, do you?”

“Obviously, old man.” I drawl. His eyebrows creep back to their original position, a corner of his mouth loosening.

“I hope for our sakes that your resemblance only goes skin-deep, pal.”

It took me a moment to cotton on to what he meant, but the lapse in time didn’t lessen my scowl when it did arrive. 

He instantly held up his hands, palms out.

“Alright, alright, consider it taken back. That you’ve shown up without an explanation makes me think it does. Listen, I’ve two hours to get you sorted, and then I’m needed across town for another appointment. What I’m saying is: don’t interrupt me.” Sitting back, he downed the last of his soda-and-whatever-else, took a big breath, and began.

At the hour and thirty mark, Wymack led me from the Foxhole to a decently clean inn five blocks over. He checked me in personally, made brief small talk with the manager, and then saw me to my room. I wanted him gone so I could duck down to the lobby, phone Katelyn, forget Andrew for fifteen minutes, and then, _maybe_ begin to process what exactly I wanted to do in the next twenty-four hours, but he persisted in eyeing me like I was the straw poised to break the camel’s back. When I finally leveled my most professional _are you done?_ look at him, he shook himself out of whatever funk had him, shoved a hand into a pocket, and bid me good-bye. 

He also left me his phone number and address, though both were for his office. Apparently he spent most of his time there. 

At last, he left. I pushed myself into my room, dropped my suitcase heavily next to the blue-blanketed bed, and for a moment, teetered. 

I could leave.

I _should’ve_ hung up the second I knew who had called me, but that was a complaint already growing old in my buzzing mind.

This was about a murder. This was my brother’s dirty business, not mine. I was in way over my head just by associating with their pet mouthpiece. A little moonshine masquerading as soda was the least of my worries.

I could still, and always, leave. Katelyn had proved that to me at a time I hadn’t thought to try.

The hotel room looked new, too clean, and lacked access to the outside beyond two small, curtained windows. It wasn’t even close to our home.

I didn’t owe him _anything._ Hell if he’d ever done anything good for me.

But that, I supposed-- grudgingly- that wasn’t... strictly true. I may not have been the easiest person to get along with (nor did I make an effort to change this, but I wasn’t blind enough to think I was pleasant company), but I was no longer a coward. I couldn’t stay just because he commanded it, as if we were teenagers again. I would stay because I owed myself something like closure.

If it all went well, and _when_ I returned home, Katelyn would be proud I took the chance. When Theresa grew up, I would be able to tell her about her grandmother.

I kicked the bed post, scuffing my shoe, and turned to give my greatest hope a call.


	2. DAVID WYMACK

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings for this chapter** : racism.

“You think he’s gonna run?”

“I think he’ll think about it. I think it’ll keep him up all night.”

After hours, the Foxhole rarely stood empty. Tonight, it hosted two smoking men: one, pale, with crow’s feet stamped at the corners of his eyes whenever he spoke; two, dark, with calloused hands better suited for the docks than scrubbing glasses. The latter had a rag on the countertop, his hands flat over it and back bowed like a lone maple in a farmer’s field. He was one strong sucker: that he stood around the Foxhole at all showed as much.

The first one listed is me. Abby says my crow’s feet are endearing.

She thinks she’s so funny, that Abby.

Drawn tight as a fraying rope, Matt Boyd’s mouth thinned along with his patience. “Boss says not to worry. That he’ll stick around.”

 _Poor bastard_ , I thought about saying. Even if he was an ass with a hornet’s empathy, sympathy struck me down to my core. _The poor bastard hasn’t a clue about what he’s getting into. Thinks it’s a temporary thing, like the deadline’s when they kick him out of the inn._

I hadn’t a clue way back when. Only once you cottoned on, that was when they got you. 

It wasn’t all bad insofar as the day-to-day went. The times in between, though - hoo, boy. I imagined I had a decent memory, but there was a whole lot I’d seen in the past four years that even the simplest farmboy wouldn’t forget.

What a thirty-something stodgy professor did or didn’t decide ultimately wasn’t my call. I was part of the clean up crew, not the instigators. Thank God Almighty for small favors.

Shifting on my barstool, a guffaw escaped. “I believe it - swear his eyes bugged out his skull the second I brought up his brother. Bet he couldn’t wrap his average Joe head around it, so I doubt he knows well enough to run. Yeah, he’ll stick around, against the better judgement of anybody with half a wit. The man’s got his fucking face, Matt. He shouldn’t be walking around town, let alone getting anywhere near your crowd.”

Maybe more of my disgruntlement showed than I meant, because Matt Boyd cracked a grin and shook his head. The tension eased up on his shoulders. Good, that was good, but the rest of this business wasn’t even _close_ to funny. Wipe that look off your face, I wanted to snap, which also must have made its way onto my face, as he - the brat - shrugged one shoulder and laughed at me.

Matt Boyd laughed like he had just the right amount of care in the world, and wouldn’t mind helping you with yours. Men smiled when they heard it, women sighed about it, and kids did stupid shit to inspire more of it. Hell, even being the one laughed at, I couldn’t take it personally. I grumbled to show him I wasn’t impressed and dug into a pocket for my smokes. He, of course, took the opportunity to reign in his laughter (another thing he did effortlessly: this guy just didn’t seem to quit) and share what he apparently thought was the gag of the year. Sure he did! He hadn’t been the one charged with meeting a pissed off Andrew Minyard’s mirror image.

“ _Twins._ Minyard twins. That’s something straight outta Hollywood, that is. You think it’s the reason he got called in?” Somehow, Matt grinned through the question, though the idea of a second Minyard cutting a thug open sent a shiver up my spine. The mirth faded as he went on, and I knew I wasn’t going to like what he thought. “Jack’s been ready for weeks to step up.”

Nope, I didn’t like it. Boyd was better leaving fiery Jack out of the picture. _Jack_ was better left out of the picture. Where Matt wasn’t at risk for a review even with the recent blow to all our egos by the name of Seth Gordon, that uppity spitfire toed the line every time he so much as breathed wrong.

Ever an honest man, I said as much.

“Boss hates his guts, and you think he’s going to give him more reason to hang around after-hours?”

“Better’n a civilian, is all I’m thinking.”

“You’re thinking too much, Matt.” Turning my eyes away, I at last shake out a smoke and fish for my lighter. Just needed something to do with my hands, is all. “You and me both, we’re thinking too much.”

“Are you two done flapping your jaws?” Her voice cut in with all the subtlety of an automobile down a dusty road, swinging out from the back-room’s doors with her dark eyes narrow. _Speaking of spitfires_ , this time of the good variety, she gave us the stink eye for a solid five seconds before breaking into a grin that echoed faintly of Boyd’s (or maybe it was the other way around, with Boyd matching Wilds). “Better not be, because I want to hear all about the new fella. Word is he looks the spitting image of Minyard, only he’s still got his tongue.”

Matt, infatuated lovebird that he was, wasted no time in dropping his rag and wrapping his arms around his girl, hugging her tight and inspiring a brief, happier smile. These two were holding up well, I thought, watching them through my first puff of smoke. ‘Course, they had each other.

But it wouldn’t do to play third wheel at my own meeting. I cleared my throat; they fell apart, though just barely. “You shouldn’t trust everything you hear, Danny. But that’s true, alright. He’s a twin.”

Matt, curse him, laughed again. “A twin. Just what we need, innit? Hey, doll, whaddya want? Lemon with a twist? A coke on the rocks? A mansion over the bay? Diamonds? Pearls? C’mon, give the word, and I’ll fix you up something nice.”

Laughing herself, Dan swatted his arm as he turned to the stairs, though her gaze strayed lower than his eyes. “Start with the coke, hot-shot. Mr. Wymack?”

“Give me something to nibble on.”

“You heard the man. Get stepping, tiger.”

He heads to the stairs without missing a beat. She watches him go, her face softer than I should be privy to seeing, before she turns those eyes on me and loses that happy gleam. In that moment, I know I’m not going to like what she has to ask me, either.

“So, we got Minyard’s doppelganger buying tomatoes from the sweet old lady down the street, and-- how’s that case going with the scummy black bird, anyway?”

Eh, there’d been worse questions. At least this one I’d rehearsed over breakfast with Abby’s unsympathetic and worried presence.

“What case?” Another puff of smoke, and I took the cigarette from my mouth, leaning hard against the counter. “We’re beating our heads into the wall, Dan. You and me both know it. Riko Moriyama’s not going to lose his freedom over one dead thug.” 

Even if it meant a lot more than Seth’s life. A breach of security that high on the chain… Seth wasn’t close to most people’s friend, but he’d been one of the boss’s early recruits. Hand-picked and present for most of Boyd’s gigs, he was a brute, but he wasn’t carelessly stupid. He knew he had it good under the boss’s care. Hell, I’d heard he’d almost gotten the guts to ask Reynolds out on a proper date. He wouldn’t have thrown it away for an extra gulp of moonshine, especially not where his passing would bring the police right to our second-biggest supplier’s door. It took a lot of favors to put a lid on it, a lot more to convince the supplier not to run out, and, worst of all, forced Boyd to cut a few fresh thugs loose without knowing how many more rats there were. I heard Minyard (the crazy one, not the stuffy academic) had even gotten involved. Matt had to hit the block again for recruitment before Nicky’s political campaigning could move forward, but he couldn’t do that easily without the extra muscle and _quality assurance_ Seth represented.

But maybe, you know, maybe he’d messed up. It happened.

If it hadn’t come so soon after Kevin announcing his intention to reach the national championships for the first time in six years and the boss backing his name as publicly as he could, I’d give the mistake theory more credit.

As it was, I believed in Seth enough to recognize he wouldn’t have messed up _that bad._

In my distraction, Dan’s voice grew cold enough she could have frozen her own ice cubes. “You don’t think he did it?”

“I don’t know if he did it, or if he paid some urchin to do it, or if it really was an accident. It’s not my business to know. Fact is, Gordon - rest his soul - died on sour moonshine, and the best evidence in the world couldn’t move the courts to do more than tweak the Raven’s beak for it. Which, I might remind you, I haven’t the best evidence, I’ve barely _any_ evidence, all of it circumstantial, and yet I’m being asked to drag down the greatest boxing champion of the century.”

Silence fell between us. I met her eyes, watched the emotions twist around behind them, and waited her out.

It was a big ‘if’ on whether I could even find witnesses willing to say they’d seen Gordon around Moriyama. Seth had been Kevin’s off-on watchdog between seasons, just like Matt and Renee and Dan and god knew who else, but while he’d never out-right skirted his duty, it’d been clear he hadn’t taken it seriously. Worse, everyone knew Kevin and he were on the outs. If it hadn’t been mandated from above, the two probably would’ve done more than bloody each other’s knuckles before happily never meeting again. He made for a weird target if you wanted to spook the precious Baby Boy, unless you knew exactly what sort of show Josten ran.

That is: a tight one. Say what you want, but it was a cold day in hell when “Crispy” Josten lost one of his top boys. The devil must’ve been shivering something fierce when Seth went belly-up the night after Kevin’s announcement.

Finally, Dan admitted with a look like a bad tooth flared up, “It doesn’t seem like a case worth winning.”

No, it wasn’t. At best, not what would happen but _at best_ , Moriyama went behind bars. That didn’t bring back our boys, or patch up the smudge on our reputation, or scare off Moriyama’s backers (whoever they were; the boss maybe knew, but I sure as hell didn’t). It seemed to me like a case to flush the coop: get Moriyama on the stand, see who cried wolf for him, and follow the fleeing hens to where they thought they’d be safe. Or maybe it was to keep him in place, to make sure he didn’t disappear while the others tied the noose, but really, his fame managed that well enough.

It was brave of Dan to talk about it at all. Seth hadn’t had many friends, but after years working together, I liked to think Dan and Matt weren’t cold enough to feel nothing for him.

Didn’t change how the case scrambled my insides every time I woke and remembered what I had to do.

Rubbing at my face, I muttered, “No, it doesn’t. I feel like I’m being asked to sleep on a bear trap.” 

It wasn’t as if I could say much more, both for worry of prying ears and because Matt returned with the drinks.

Apparently we hadn’t been as quiet as I’d wanted us to be, since Matt looked me dead in the eye after passing over my gin and tonic, his expression absolutely still. God, but that gave me the shivers. These two weren’t like the crazies that plagued this town, but they knew how to do their jobs.

“You’ll go for it anyway, won’t you, Mr. Wymack?” Quiet, the words definitely kept between the three of us. “We check everything that comes through, and we don’t carry moonshine. Somebody slipped Seth the bottle.”

A scoff.

“Damn me if I’m not a fool for it, but yeah, I’m taking the case.” With a tip of my drink to him, an absurd laugh caught in my throat. “You know how it is. Not like there’s much of a choice.”

“Aw, don’t be like that, Mr. Wymack. We’ve all got a choice.”

“Yeah, well.” I eyed him in dark amusement. _Sure_ , drinking gasoline was technically an option. That was the boss’s type of game, not mine. “Sometimes picking between a rock and a hard place isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

After that, conversation turned to lighter topics: baseball, the new bakery next to the old Cathedral, the blue dress Dan had her eyes set on, Matt’s stunning ability to toss a balled up rag into a bucket set at the end of the counter. We sipped our drinks. My cigarette burned out. Eventually, I thought to check my pocket watch, and pushed myself up with a sigh.

“I better get going. You two take care.” They smiled, Matt’s arm around Dan’s nearly bare shoulders (how she didn’t freeze with all the skin her dresses exposed, I didn’t know. The new fashion trends baffled me). They held each other upright. Gazing at them for longer than a minute was bound to make the toughest sailor’s heart melt. “For what it’s worth - I really am sorry to hear about his passing. ”

Dan’s hand fell to his back, her face shuttered.

Matt bowed his head a little, just as his mother must have taught him. Jesus Christ, they were young. “I appreciate you saying that, sir. He was a foul-mouthed tyrant. It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

My mouth thinned. I nodded, curt, took up my hat, and headed for the door.

Rock and a hard place, alright. It was true, though. Not taking the opportunity to see the Raven fall from grace would’ve been like guzzling gasoline. Six years ago, Moriyama skirted punishment after effectively running Kevin's career into the ground. Scant though the chance of succeeding was, this was the trial I’d been waiting for. Where was the choice in that?


	3. ALLISON REYNOLDS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings for this chapter** : homophobia, misogyny.
> 
> (Allison Reynolds is, quite honestly, the ideal.)

Blue was back in season, which was patently awful. The winter’s purples hadn’t been much better, but at least they didn’t make me look like a breeze could carry me away. If asked, which I was, frequently, I’d of course praise Coco Chanel’s innovations on keeping the chemise dress relevant. On modesty and appropriateness, I might murmur that the shorter hemline helped in the summer and add a small smile and lidded look to get the more determined off the stupid subject. 

Anyway.

Blue. It wasn’t _bad._ It went decently with my hair, the bleach blond that I’m quite proud of maintaining no matter how long I’m kept at the office. See, the thing is, red and its associates - orange, yellow, pink - was simply the superior color. That it clashed with most blues was a fault on the cooler color alone. 

Point in fact: the man who settled to my left, his navy pin-stripe three piece clashing terribly with his off-red oxfords. I contemplated moving, if only to keep from association, but then our great governor _finally_ stopped flapping his gums about unions bringing our city’s downfall and began taking questions.

He wasn’t much for the people, our great governor. The fat cats enjoyed him well enough, though whispers abounded that his years in office were reaching their end. Funny that those whispers should reach him, and rather than changing his policies, he strengthened his reactionary stance, thereby digging his unpopular hole ever deeper. Money was good, he must have thought. Industry was booming. No one in this day and age cared about the collective working man.

Ah, but that would most likely be the work of good, reliable Nicky. Thinking long term - though he listened dutifully to his experienced elders- Nicky used his own time on the stage to polish his reformer reputation. Why, yes, next to our dear governor, Nicky Hemmick looked mighty fine. 

Following the badly dressed man’s thinly veiled, empty flattery for Mr. Johnson’s firm stance, I posed a question about General Motors’ automobile factory’s heavy reliance on child labor, waited a beat for the fierce scribble of pencils around me, and penned a note to myself to invest in sewing myself a pastel frock. I only had little black numbers. Flattering as they were, something that Seth frequently whispered in my ear, I simply.

Hm.

Another man - by my count, only three women sat in the room of thirty-seven, myself included - continued my line of questioning, his voice two shades shy of accusatory. Better.

Black flattered, but if people didn’t wear blue, they wore black. I wasn’t born to blend in.

The conference droned on.

Our dear governor was an insipid, sweaty man of little importance and little charm. He managed to be where he was only by the grace of his malleability, and he was just dim enough not to realize what the shift in power under him meant. The original man who put him in office had been gone for four years: his curtain call was fast coming up.

Nicky knew it.

 _He needs a push_ , Renee had told me over an exquisite lobster dinner in the swankiest part of Baltimore’s pier. We had the best booth in the back, the heavy velvet curtains keeping our conversation between us. _He’s hesitating. At first it made sense, but now we need him to act sooner, not later._

_Why’s the Boss even keep him around? I could name you five ambitious schmucks with as much potential, and not nearly as much personality. Which makes them astounding, I’d like to add. Nicky has the spine of an overcooked snail._

_Neil thinks it’s because of Klose._ Renee was like that. No one else got away with calling the boss by his first name. I’m pretty sure they were sweet on each other, since I knew (unlike most) that her and Minyard weren’t ever going to be an item. I wasn’t, I should make clear, jealous. The boss made sure I kept what I deserved, and I was plenty happy not dealing with his psychotic shadow on a month-to-month, let alone day-to-day, basis. _That his cousin’s convincing him not to listen as much to his advice._

_Uh? I thought he and his cousin were close. Why’s he trying to get Nicky knocked off?_

__Candlelight caught Renee’s eyes as she sipped her juice. Just like that, I knew this was real, that this could turn into an honest problem. I didn’t much like the yellow-bellied politician, but I’d run his circle for a while, you know? And he’d always been decent to me in a way most men weren’t, giving me the respect of keeping his flirting to words alone. Hemmick wasn’t the kind of guy I wanted to hear about being fished out of the bay.

 _Nicky knows it’s best for everyone if Klose keeps out of fox business._ These words came slower. I remembered them, like I remembered everything a person said with intent. _But thinking about Nicky’s career, maybe it’d be better if his cousin returned to Germany. The papers say things aren’t going too well across the pond; I’m sure his family would appreciate his help._

I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that. I hummed noncommittally to mask my hesitance and poked a fork into my lobster tail. It was succulent and perfectly buttered.

Renee gave me time, because she was good at reading people. Our topic meandered to voting - the suffrage movement she’d supported had finally achieved its goal a few summers ago, and it was still a thing worth talking about, what with the election coming up. It would be my second time in the polls; truthfully, not that I’d throw it in Renee’s face or anything since she thought it was so great, I didn’t bother with anything below the federal level. The boss never pressured me to flood the boxes, he had men a dime a dozen for that, so I saw even less of a point.

We couldn’t stall out the conversation forever, however. Frustratingly, I found myself being the one to sigh and drop my fork. _Alright. I’ll give him a nudge he can’t ignore at the next conference._

 _Thanks, Allison._ That was another thing. Nobody else really, honestly thanked people around here. Renee said it, and I swear she meant it. _Oh, and if you could? I’m sorry, I know you hate covering the topic, but the public needs to know he’s thinking of tying the knot with his sweetheart._

My nose scrunched up. I really did hate covering that topic.

But, moreover, because I would’ve noticed - _Wait, he is? Since when? With who?_

Sometimes I’m not at my best. Thankfully, Renee didn’t mind spelling this one out for me.

_You know, I can’t recall her name… But no man gets far in politics without a wife._

If there was one thing more pointless than talking about who was with who, it would be basing worth on a marriage. I hadn’t been happy to hear that, but what could you do? However unhappy I was, Nicky would feel worse. He seemed like the traditional type, like he’d want to take it real slow. Pity for whatever girl he ended up wrangling on such short notice. 

The night after that conversation was the last time I saw Seth. We’d met at his place, and then headed out together for one of the seedier speakeasies. It was stupid. I hadn’t even wanted to go there. The Foxhole gave us both major discounts, but he’d said he was sick of seeing Boyd’s ugly mug. _Fine, you big palooka,_ I’d said. _You’re paying._

Then he’d ended up passing out in the bathroom and drowned in his own vomit.

Fucking hell.

It was whatever. 

Point is, Renee caught me outside work within three days and told me to wait before giving Nicky the nudge. They were calling in help to fill the cracks left behind the-- the shake-up, and it’d take a bit.

Election season’s coming up, I almost reminded her, but it hadn’t seemed worth the energy. Instead I’d nodded and did my work and then it was a few weeks later and the go-ahead arrived and now here I was.

I forced myself to write something beyond the pastel frock note, but I forgot about whatever it was the moment my notebook snapped shut and I beelined for Nicky in the after-speech mingling.

Though he wasn’t anywhere close to as honest as the people liked to believe, he could be relied on for his color coordination. Dark grey suited him well: it didn’t make his tan skin look like anything more incriminating than too many hours at the beach, and his orange bowtie distracted from his thick, full eyelashes. He was swarmed, as usual, but he politely cut his talk with the state treasurer short once he spotted me. A few journalists of my rival newspapers exchanged glances at the warm smile and firm handshake he gave me: they’d seen him give me preferential treatment more than once. A man, and they’d think he valued what my reputation could give him. 

They were a pack of shit-brained idiots. Maybe if they stopped thinking with their cocks, they’d make front page.

Oh, but that was old news.

“You look stunning, Ms. Reynolds. Simply stunning.” Nicky leaned close, his voice an intimate murmur. To my side, a camera flashed. “Though I admit I expected black, not blue.”

God, sometimes I wanted to give him a black eye. He was so stupid.

“Black’s for widows, Mr. Hemmick. And bowties are for choir boys.” I smiled my best as we drew apart, my hand remaining in his for a moment too long. His smile went a little strained at the edges for a short second: my nails, a pink to match my lips, dug white crescents into his wrist. “I’m glad to see you’re doing swell yourself. You never seem to be doing anything but, really.”

He laughed, good-natured and perfectly timed. A few journalists chortled along with him. For doing that, they no longer mattered.

“You’ve done amazing things for the governor, and everyone knows he owes you for handling that scandal with the police last fall.”

“Oh, well,” he said, a hand raised to adjust his bright bowtie. “It was a tragedy the Captain lost his life before the truth could be brought to light. It really was. The only good to come of the whole mess were the investigations that turned up those horrid crime rings - I don’t mean to salt wounds that this city still feels, but our city is much safer now than it had been before.”

I nodded as if this was news. 

‘Horrid crime rings.’ Yeah, I reported on those. They existed, but only the boss’s fringe competition had been cleaned out. Now, light competition was good even in a business like ours (it made those who dug too deep think they had a chance to avoid Crispy’s reach), but he’d long made it clear child trafficking was one thing he wouldn’t tolerate. Lucrative payouts made some upstarts willingly risk the fire, I guess. He made good on that policy by inspiring those raids and seeing a number of men off to the noose. I’d written an incredible article about the ordeal - it’d made front page, and now it was framed and hung in my office.

The boss had been good on his vow against child trafficking (it was smart - besides being disgusting, child labor laws were being a real hot topic, and the feds weren't as easy to bribe as our statesmen), and good on revenge against the self-righteous Captain who thought that he could put Josten and Minyard in the slammer because of how close they stood when they were out on the town, or some other gossipy tripe like that. Ergo, the ‘investigation’ into police and crime rings made for two birds, one stone, neat as your grandma’s Sunday best.

I hadn’t reported on the Captain's accusations against Josten and Minyard. In fact, I buried any journalist who tried. 

All in all, it’d been a great few weeks.

I cleared my throat when I heard the man next to me finish a trite joke. Nicky’s eyes found me immediately. He still looked strained, I thought, like someone kept pinching and pulling at his edges. 

_Oh_ , I realized as I started on a topic that would make the papers come morning. _He knows something’s up._ I wondered for the first time of Klose, and why his cousin wasn’t in attendance. The Kraut didn’t show up to everything Nicky did, but it was a near thing with events this large. 

So he wasn’t as dumb as he acted. That was whatever, I guess, in the grand scheme of things.

“Mr. Hemmick, you know, Mr. Johnson’s been an incredible mentor to you, but few would argue that you don’t make a fine candidate yourself.”

In the corner of my eye, I saw a handful of journalists nod, and more sharpen their gazes. They starved for news: the political scene had been too quiet since the police investigation, and Mr. Johnson running again wasn’t anything to write about. 

“I, well,” He said, once more adjusting his perfectly straight bowtie, “I wouldn’t want to be hasty. I’m still quite young. I’ve a lot to learn.”

He moved his eyes to a different reporter, but that was not close to good enough to shut the conversation down. I bet his undershirt was soaked in sweat. 

“Oh, come now, Mr. Hemmick,” I started.

“Nicky,” he said, affable but ever more nervous. “Call me Nicky. Mr. Hemmick, my father, is a minister in a lovely small town.” Some chuckled obligingly.

“Nicky,” I amended, slow and deliberate, my tongue splitting the name in half. _Ni--cky._ It was a tone warning people to stop wasting my time. “Really, that’s exactly what people want: new blood. New ideas. And you certainly have a great deal of them. When are you thinking of blazing your own trail?”

“That’s true,” another journalist piped in (the badly color coordinated one, as it turned out), who I nodded encouragement toward. “You’re in the papers as much as Mr. Johnson. Why, you should run for mayor.”

“Or maybe governor,” I loudly murmured, and watched his face drain of color as cameras flashed. 

He looked almost Oriental like that. A person saw it best in his eyes, too dark and narrow to be home-grown. As far as the papers went, his parents were of good Christian breeding, but then, the papers only ran shots of his father. Of course, right then, those eyes were wide as dinner plates.

“I have thought of it,” he allowed, his throat working. The cornered animal look began to recede, his pearly whites flashing as he smiled for the photos. “And I’ve discussed it with some of my closest peers and advisors. Perhaps I’ll throw my hat in this term, even.”

 _That_ caused a dim roar after everyone realized what they heard.

I hung back as the others swarmed, a multitude of questions about starting his campaign with only ten months until polling, who exactly his peers were, what Mr. Johnson thought of it, and a plethora of other repetitive drivel. A glance toward our soon-to-be-former governor made me think Mr. Johnson hadn’t been privy to Nicky’s closest peers: the old man looked at the abrupt hub-bub in our corner with faint alarm.

“Your sweetheart, Nicky,” I cut in as soon as an opening presented itself, and smiled in satisfaction as half the reporters turned to me, sure I had some information they didn’t, “what about her? Are you going to finally propose?”

“I,” Nicky started, caught wrong-footed even worse than before. It wasn’t a good look for him. “I, I-- sorry, what was that?”

Now nearly everyone paid attention to me. They might whistle as I passed, but when it came down to it, they knew I knew best.

“The girl you’ve been sweet on for ages.” I said, and paused. Counted to three. And raised my hand to my dainty mouth, as if I’d slipped up. “Oh! I’m so sorry. I know you and her were keeping quiet, but with campaigning putting you on the road, won’t you want her with you?”

Nicky stared at me.

The men began to joke and jostle each other, crowing that they’d known their good old boy Nicky had a dame on the side. A few remarked it was gentlemanly of him to keep her out of the spotlight - those were the ones who would tear the girl to shreds once she went public, whoever she was.

“My sweetheart,” he parroted. 

I take back thinking he wasn’t as stupid as he acted.

It was shit how much having someone hanging off your arm mattered, but he should’ve known it did. Everybody knew it did. That was why Seth and I kept as quiet as we could: my reputation demanded it.

“What’s her name?” That badly dressed man asked. Maybe he was useful for something after all.

“I… I was hoping she could tell you herself, fellas.” He said, and laughed a laugh I thought better belonged to a strangled man. At least he was cottoning on. “I’m sorry, this is so sudden. We were hoping to take it at our own pace.”

More than a few booed at the modesty. Being a gentleman was one thing, but now he looked like he wasn’t taking pride in his girl. 

He smiled. It looked brittle, but in the right lighting, I supposed it was soft. “I promise she won’t be in the dark much longer. Anyone have recommendations for a good jeweler’s? -- Don’t publish that, boys, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

The men perked up at this familiar, light-hearted banter, ribbing him instantly about how much he must love this dame. They hadn’t even known she’d existed before the hour. Hell, as far as I knew, she didn’t exist. 

I excused myself as soon as I could without drawing attention, not at all possessing the patience or energy to deal with Nicky’s inevitable blustering for not giving him a head’s up. He was a big boy, he could deal.

Renee owed me another lobster dinner, and a whole bottle of French wine.


	4. AARON MINYARD

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings for this chapter:** racism, lamp-shaded sexism, graphic violence, aaron's crankiness.

The dame I met in the morning was a slight girl, pale as death in face and bob-cut, platinum blond hair. If she weren’t weighed down by ankle-length petticoats, a long sleeved blouse buttoned to her chin and a tightly wrapped shawl, I feared a breeze would’ve carried her off. She wore silver prayer medals and a cross outside her clothing, too. It made her the spitting image of a devout Catholic if I’d ever seen one. Funny, though. She hadn’t even the barest spattering of freckles, and she didn’t stink like how I imagined the typical paddy would.

As we walked, she caught my eye lingering on her cross. With a gentle smile, she let slip she was a Quaker, and quietly admired Martin Luther when I obligingly replied with my own denomination. 

It was an unnervingly polite discussion to have with who Wymack described as the prettiest and sharpest gun molls I’d ever meet. He’d used that word seriously, too: _gun moll._ Like he was living a life straight out of the pictures. Then again, the time for disbelief on my brother’s business had ended over breakfast this morning, before Renee Walker fetched me to return to the Foxhole.

Wymack told me about a lot more than the pretty birds I’d run into. He told me about Seth Gordon, about Kevin “Baby Boy” Day (a name I’d almost forgotten about, the boxing world so far from Palmetto State University and the Baby Boy six years past relevance), and about Riko “The Raven” Moriyama’s supposed involvement. All interesting, sure, but it didn’t involve me much. I paid closer attention to why I was here: they needed me to work with Matt Boyd, a colored fellow, in checking over potential hires and new contacts. I needn’t worry about dirtying my hands too badly: there was a mountain of filing to be done, what with record books being one thing that never ran out. I’d be free to go once the ranks filled out again. It might take a month, maybe more, definitely not less.

I’d asked him what they were doing bringing me out here to work with their bell boy. Compared to the average person, I wasn’t an easy one to intimidate, but Wymack’s withering look and tight _right now? That bell boy, your partner, is gonna be your best bud_ had me reconsider repeating the question to Renee.

There was a few other notes Wymack made, but they weren’t as important. Not as if I wanted to know more than I had to -- the way Wymack kept startling whenever he looked at me too quick made me think Andrew had my back whether he meant to or not, but looks and a name only carried you so far. Katelyn waited for me back home. I wouldn’t be trapped here forever.

Anyway, I didn’t know even close to everything, but I knew enough to let Renee take the lead down a backroad. She kept me engaged with small talk that was just barbed enough I couldn’t let it fall, though the way she kept cutting me small, private smiles made me want to scowl until she let off. She looked like she recognized something in me, and I didn’t like that. 

Some stupid part of me wondered if she was my brother’s girl. It was the stupidest part of me, and I shoved it away the second we rounded into an alley behind the Foxhole’s scratched, wooden walls. She knocked twice on the backdoor, paused, and then knocked once. A slit opened and stark white eyes set in a dark face peered through. She smiled. The slit closed, and the door opened.

The man, tall and broad as an ox, ushered us through with a wide, jovial smile. Dressed well in an ironed, salmon flannel, black suspenders and spotless khakis, he kept his back straight and his words friendly as he shut the door behind us.

“You must be Aaron Minyard!” I nodded, though I couldn’t find what words I wanted to say before he kept going. “Jeez Louise, they weren’t kidding about you. The name’s Matt, Matt Boyd. Renee here tells me we’ll be working together for a little while. Isn’t that right, Renee? You’re looking incredible as always, I must say.”

“Be gentle, Matt. I don’t think he’s used to such loud company.” Renee said, a warm look in her eyes and upturned mouth. It was hard to take offense, even when I realized Wymack must’ve said something about my bell boy comment. 

Matt, certainly, took no offense. It was a little difficult imagining him angry, actually.

(That was not, in my opinion, necessarily a good character trait. People needed anger: it kept a man human.)

“Don’t you worry none. He seems like he’s on the level. So, Aaron. You mind if I call you Aaron?”

I did, but I shrugged.

He nodded, gesturing for me to follow. The Foxhole’s backroom was cramped beyond belief, crates and ice boxes piled one on top of the other, but somehow, after shuffling aside a half-empty shelf, there was room for another door to swing open. He kept chattering as he led me down. Behind me, Renee’s skirts whispered as she followed, the light cutting out as the door closed behind us.

“Ignoring the ache you’re bound to get hunched over that rickety desk, I swear you’ve the comfiest gig possible. Show up on Jackson and Mulberry street’s junction at seven o’clock tomorrow, and we’ll head off to our official pad. Before that, though, it’s best if you meet the boys. You’ll be seeing ‘em around, and if you’ve got any problem that I’m not around to help with, you feel free to talk with one of them.”

He sounded amused at his own words, as if they were a joke only he was in on. I couldn’t help feeling a little insulted.

The stairs led to another door led to a cement basement, the ceiling’s pipes exposed and the lightbulbs bare and yellow in the smoky haze. Rickety wooden chairs sat around squat, dirty tables, and ever more crates filled up the corners. A few men, stripped to their undershirts, shoes and suspenders and quietly playing cards, glanced up to nod at Matt, and then nearly fell over themselves to get up and greet Renee and me. I noticed at once they avoided my eyes.

It brought to mind how Wymack jumped whenever I scowled too deep. Huh. My brother had really made a name for himself, hadn’t he. 

“That’s Patrick, and that’s Frank, and there’s Fernando-- boys, boys, c’mon, I know your mamas raised you better than to fall to pieces in front of a lady. Cool your heels, take a seat.” It wasn’t Renee that had them out of sorts, I thought, but then, maybe it was. She had a presence, too, even though her dress and manner made it seem like she should’ve faded into the background. It was a calmer, quieter one, sure, but it was there. 

Reluctantly, the ‘boys’ retook their seats. Matt shook his head with a fond grin, finishing his roll call with no rush at all.

“Davie- don’t play him in poker, he’ll cheat your shoes right off your feet--” Davie, a colored boy perched next to a flat-faced ginger, made a token protest. Matt waved him off with a _yeah, okay_ flap of his hand, “and Jack, our resident crack-shot, and Jean. Hey, Renee, you remember Jean? Think I talked about him before. He’s still pretty soft.”

Jean was a long-nosed fellow with a pinched look that I wasn’t entirely sure he ever lost. He met Renee’s eyes, but unlike the others, he didn’t linger. He glanced almost immediately toward Matt, his shoulders inching up a little to his ears. Almost like he was embarrassed.

When he spoke, he surprised me with a faint, foreign accent. I couldn’t place it, though I’d never traveled farther than Chicago, so I wasn’t the best for labeling. “Quit fooling, Boyd. I’m not soft.”

Matt snorted, but Renee said in a nice, low voice, “Yes, we’ve been acquainted. It’s good to see you’re still here, Jean. You too, Frank.”

“Downright miracle you two didn’t end up in the pen with the rest of ‘em.” Matt half-turned to me, barely catching the look on my face (I knew there couldn’t be any there) before he started explaining. “Frank and Jean were part of the crew hanging around Roland’s joint when the police raided. They’re the only two not in the slammer on association or worse.”

I eyed him. What exactly did he think I had to say about that?

“Lovely,” I finally drawled.

Two boys - Davie and another, maybe Fernando - snickered uneasily.

Matt huffed under-breath, shaking his head again. “Jean’s had some time in the ring, so I wouldn’t challenge him to a wrestling match. Anyway, that’s about it. You idiots think there’s anything else worth telling about yourself?”

“I once dated a Persian Princess. She was golden as the Sahara sands.” The flat-faced ginger deadpanned. The guy to his left elbowed him in the gut and fought back a smile.

“I met your princess, Frank, and her name’s Sheena from San Diego. Aw, but you’ve beaten that story deader than a rotten horse. So’s the rest of us don’t fall asleep where we stand, how ‘bout you tell him over some drinks? It’s all on me, boys. We’ve got the whole day to get acquainted.”

The fellows mustered up their courage to look me in the eye about two drinks in to our makeshift meet-and-greet. Though I didn’t engaged anyone particularly, they loosened up enough to chat around me by their fourths and fifths. Time passed slowly, compounded by the lack of sunlight and clocks in the Foxhole’s pit. 

Matt, despite his friendliness, was no grand-stander. He talked amiably like any other schmuck, that lisp all colored folks have barely slurring his words’ edges. He got drunk. He laughed louder. 

Everyone in the company was alright. I caught an unnatural bump under an arm here, or the cut of gleaming metal tucked into a waistline there, but I don’t look long and no one made even the vaguest attempt at intimidation toward me. I answered when spoken to if the question was intelligent, which, as time passed and drinks disappeared, most were not. A few asked what my girl was like, if I still fancy her after she tied me down, because that was a safe topic no matter where you go. To this, I admit I may have drunk more than I should’ve, my vision slow to synchronize with my movements and my inhibition low: I told them she’s wonderful, and yes, I do, and she’s a better dame than any of their sorry asses could hope to get.

They laughed at this, though I meant it whole-heartedly. 

Renee stayed at my side, but she only had eyes for Jean. He’s French, I learn, the nasal quality to his English thus explained. He came to America a boxer, apparently even faced off with Baby Boy and then the Raven (and lost, of course), but he'd grown too old for the ring. Illicit activity hasn’t an age limit, and he’d miss wine too much to give it up, so here he was. Helping the Americans from their self-inflicted bad luck.

By his fifth drink, he had an arm around the back of her chair, his head tipped dangerously close to her shoulder. 

I’d thought Quakers a pious folk, but she didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she poured him another drink.

If it weren’t for the barely hidden weaponry and bootleg gin, it would’ve been another day at a tavern with my better students. 

I slumped in my chair, I suppose. The day must leave, and night took its place. Eventually men checked their pocket watches and dragged each other off a crate or out of a chair, grumbling about weak livers and the trolleys stopping soon. I don’t wave them off, but I do nod when they catch my eye for a good-bye. Davie headed out first, then Frank and Fernando, then Patrick, then Jack… 

All at once, the quiet din of noise that was a bunch of fellows packed into a room dwindled into three sorry saps and one very sober lady. Thinking it’s finished, I get to my feet, pausing a moment at the crux to gather my bearings. Jesus, but it’s been awhile since I’d gotten drunk. Wasn’t much call to, back home - private collections of alcohol were legal in my county, but the dinner parties Katelyn preferred weren’t exactly events to take the piss at.

“Oh, wait, Aaron,” Renee said, who I glowered at with one foot raised toward the stairs. Jean must have had too much to drink - his arm at one point migrated from the chair’s back to her shoulders, tie askew as if he’d tugged at it, and eyes barely cracked open. As I watched, his eyes drifted shut--- no, hold on. It was just a very slow blink.

Renee’s hand rested on his thigh. I had no idea when that happened.

I did a slow blink of my own, and scowled at her. I’d made small talk. I’d come into work the next day. What more did she want?

“Think Dan’s back from checking in at the Eden's Twilight.” Matt said to the air, his chair’s legs making an awful sound as they cracked back onto the cement. Squinting at him, I thought he didn’t look as drunk as he’d been a moment ago. “I’ll go get her.”

He moved past me faster than I could blink again. I scowled at his back, too. How dare he have that much agility.

Honestly, he wasn’t such a bad fellow. For a colored.

“Be right back!” came his voice, the door shutting on its tail.

At last remembering I’d almost been the one heading up, I swung my gaze back to the _far_ too serene Quaker. “What’s it?” A beat. I thought I shouldn’t be so impolite to a lady, but she worked for my brother. Didn’t matter if she were a dame, she didn’t deserve anything from me.

Renee looked at me with an expression I wouldn’t have liked if I weren’t drunk as a skunk, her arm sliding around Jean to help hold him up. In response, the stupid frog buried his big-nosed face into her neck, murmuring something or other about how close his place was. Maybe. It could’ve also been about how pretty he thought her blouse was. It wasn’t as if I strained to hear. In any case, it replaced the stupid look on her face with a dumber, gentler one. 

The stairs creaked as Matt returned, making his way one slow, careful step at a time. _Hah!_ I thought. _Knew you were drunk!_

I turned to tell him as much, but the man who stepped through the doorway was shorter, paler, and had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. They looked like broken glass, or the painted tiles rich folk favored for their expansive pools. In a cruel twist of fate, the bubbled, sick, red-brown skin under the left was the next thing to draw the eye. Akin to the pox, it twisted up the whole apex of his cheekbone, sloped downward to his upper lip, and stopped a hair’s breadth short of his ear. 

“Hello.” The bony man with auburn hair slicked back into a mess of spikes said. He extended a hand. “You must be Aaron Minyard.”

He was very unassuming despite the scar. In what I would later blame on the drink (but was in fact partly my pig-headedness), I squinted down at his hand. A gnarled thing, the fingers swarmed with callouses and discolorations, they weren't exactly a sight for sore eyes. But oh, then there was the rest. From the knuckles up better belonged to an old prisoner of war, a rough-and-tumble confederate, and not someone who looked near my age. There had been fire involved, or maybe acid, but worse was how a knife clearly gouged through the palm and out the other side, cutting a picture like an impressionist painted a river up his arm. If those hands could move, I would be astounded.

(I was astounded.)

Behind me, the sounds of someone scrambling to their feet occurred. I couldn’t imagine Renee rushing for anything, even a man who’d obviously crawled his way out of hell.

Eventually I took the hand, though I kept my grip light. You must understand. It’d been years since the incident with Andrew. Normal people didn’t look like this - it knocked a man off balance.

When I looked back up, he was smiling.

Even three sheets to the wind, the look of those teeth sobered me up better than a bucket of ice water. My heart caught in my throat, my lungs momentarily stopped, and the animal instinct that scientists called the hindbrain screamed at me to run.

Contrary to my weak grip, his tightened and refused to let go. Without looking away, he aimed his voice at the two behind me.

“Renee. He sends his thanks for Aaron’s safety.” A pause. His smile grew, the scar on the left paralyzing it into an odd half-grin, half-grimace. “Moreau. Take a seat, please.”

Silence.

At last those blue eyes turned away from mine and peered over my shoulder. I was shorter than him, but not by much. Maybe half a foot, probably less.

“Don’t make me ask again.”

A body sat heavily onto a chair. Poor frog, I mentally muttered. Probably didn’t even know what was going on.

Actually. _I_ didn’t know what was going on.

It took all my courage and only happened after he dropped my hand (not without a harsh, bone-grinding squeeze), but I squared my shoulders and raised my chin and curled my lip, and in a fit of absolute idiocy, demanded, “Who’re you, then?”

Behind me: the soft sound of someone cutting off a giggle, which must have been Renee. I would’ve turned my head to glare at her for it, but this hot-shot kept demanding my attention by doing things like raising his eyebrows and dimming that creepy smile.

“Neil Josten’s fine.”

Oh.

Fuck.

I’d been so distracted by my brother, I hadn’t cared about anyone else. Wymack had mentioned him, hadn’t he? Something about being Crispy. As in, called Crispy, not. 

_Well_.

I raked over his scars with a new, clearer appreciation. He found this amusing, or so I assumed, given how his expression didn’t budge.

Because I’d never learned to curb my words and wasn’t about to start until he had a gun at my temple, my fool mouth went on with, “I keep hearing about my brother, but not you.”

“They must know better than to state the obvious.” He chuckled, a low, gritty sound, like rocks in a tin can. _Ha ha!_ It didn’t last long. “No need to worry about me, Aaron. I-- oh, do you mind if I call you Aaron?”

I did. I did not say so.

He eyed me, thumbs hooked into his pockets. After a moment, he shrugged. “Mr. Minyard, then. Professor Minyard, maybe?” Silence. He gave a small sigh, like I’d somehow disappointed him, and shrugged again. “I’m not the one you need be concerned about. Please, concern yourself with you.”

My eyebrows drew together, suspicion clouding up my thoughts.

“You won’t be here long, but I hope you feel comfortable, if not at home. Andrew vouches for you, and who he vouches for, I give my complete support to. I’ve made a name for myself in this town, I like to think, and in return she’s treated me well. What’s mine, for a time, is yours. Do you understand?”

It took a moment for me to realize that wasn’t a rhetorical question, since his voice remained the same throughout. I nodded.

He nodded back, his smile dimming ever further. It looked almost normal. 

“My foxes will also give you their utmost support. If you have any trouble in Baltimore, any at all, be it a sock needing darned or a noisy neighbor quieted, you can come to us. Do you understand?”

This time, I nodded faster. He nodded as well, the earlier disappointment a distant memory.

“If you bring them or me trouble, I’ll start with your pride and turn it to ash in your mouth. Next, I’ll carve your dignity into pieces and sink them to the bottom of the bay. Finally, I’ll find your wife and child, and make them scream every time they see your face. Do you understand?”

I stopped breathing.

He stared, the smile gone. He waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I nodded.

He nodded.

“Good.”

One of those scarred, twisted hands clapped me on the shoulder, and he stepped past me. I turned in reflex to follow, my heart thudding in my ears.

Renee and Jean no longer sat hip-to-hip: he’d fallen to one chair away from her, his back rigid and face quite possibly as white as mine. The one he’d wanted for his girl smiled sympathetically first at me, and then lifted a hand for Josten to take. He pressed a kiss to her delicate knuckles, like a Prince returning from the war to find his maiden fair.

I’d wondered if she was my brother’s girl, but now I understood how much worse it was.

(Later, alone and with air to breath, I’d reshuffle that opinion. Even if “Crispy” Josten was worse, my brother and anyone would always be _worst._ )

After that, though, Josten acted peculiarly: he seemed to forget her, taking a seat to Jean’s right. Moreau distinctly did not appreciate the gesture, if the way his adam’s apple bobbed was any indication. Then again, if I’d been caught with a crime boss’s moll on my arm, I’d be just about pissing myself, too. Hell, just watching the scene made me wary about Jean’s chances of walking out with both feet attached.

“We were all getting acquainted,” Renee said, as if Josten wasn’t busy checking the left-over bottles for alcohol, or whatever him swirling them around meant. “Matt and Dan should be down soon.”

“Mm-hm, I passed Matt in the hall. He looked awfully happy.”

“It’s nice,” she said, with what I think was supposed to be sincerity. “He’s been so out of sorts since Seth passed.”

Josten nodded, plunked one bottle down and reached for the next.

Jean still hadn’t breathed. Looking at his stupid mug, I realized what I must’ve appeared like, and scraped up the last dredges of my liquid courage to stride over and find a seat between Renee and Jean. To my left, she gave me the smallest quirk of her lips, as if that was encouraging.

“You used to box, didn’t you?”

“I,” the former boxer started, stopped. Restarted, his accent more pronounced in his discomfort. “Yes, sir.”

“Please. Josten’s fine. Did you ever go against Baby Boy?”

“Yes, s-- Josten.”

“He had a mean left hook back in the day.”

A long, long pause.

“He did.”

After that, we sat in horrid silence. Crispy Josten evidently found what alcohol he wanted, as he stopped swirling bottles and downed the small puddle at the bottom of an unlabeled green one. Rum, I think it was. I honestly couldn’t remember, my mind felt like it’d been stuffed with cotton. I hadn’t felt this bad since the night before my master’s thesis had been due, with five somehow overlooked conflicting points of data and twenty pages left to edit.

To my right, Jean at last regained life and shifted in his seat. Renee turned on him the same look she’d given me right before Josten showed up.

At last, the doors above opened and closed, and the stairs creaked. Quick, this time. Less addled that I was, I caught one set of steps. Perhaps Matt had gotten tired of waiting for Dan, whoever that was.

The man opened the final door and rejoined us. I caught sight of metal in his right hand, and wondered, _Is Dan a baseball bat?_

All hell broke loose.

To my right, Jean shot up, his chair clattering behind him. To his right, Josten swung his bottle and broke it on the man’s face, sending him sprawling. I raised my arm to block any stray glass, catching sight of Renee doing the same.

“Fuck!” Snarled a nasally voice, both from upbringing and an airway clogged with blood. He scrabbled at his waistline before he seemed to realize nothing was there and kicked. He caught the table, and it overturned, glasses falling everywhere. Renee snagged my arm and pulled me back to the crates. I could do nothing but watch the scene unfold.

“Oh, Jean.” Josten said, murmured, his voice and eyes tight at the edges. He looked too intense, a snake in human form with a mouse dead in its sights. “Number three. Our dear brother Jean.”

Jean kicked again, this time for Josten’s legs. He got the broken half of a rum bottle stuck in his thigh for his trouble.

“Fuck!” He yelped, again and again. “Fuck, fuck, shit, fuck--”

Still, he tried to get up. Matt came in like a force of nature, and his bat caught the bloodied man under the ribs. At first Jean made no noise but the inarticulate struggle of a body on cement, all of his impressive height curled into a protective ball; then he wheezed, coughed, wheezed, and spat a pink glob on the floor. Where the bottle had lodged into his leg lasted only shards of glittering glass, the green catching sickly in the basement’s yellow light.

It took him a few tries, but at last his words took shape.

“-- I didn’t, I-- didn’t--”

“Didn’t what, Jean?” The was Josten, another, already broken bottle in his hand and voice cloying, like a summer without wind. “Come into my house a friend, and burrow into my walls like a rat?”

Unable to keep his breath, Jean shook his head in violent denial.

By his head, Matt tapped the bat on the floor. The man flinched horribly, a full-bodied jerk that came from his very soul.

Eyeing him with malice, Josten continued, his voice eerily soft. “I think you did. I think you took what we had to offer and sold us out to the highest bidder.” Softer, softer. Eventually, it was like he spoke with a close friend. “It’s understandable. They probably frightened you. Threatened you. You haven’t been here long, you didn’t know we could protect you. Is that right?”

“No,” rasped Josten’s target.

Matt slammed the bat into his back. Then his arm, once he uncurled. He howled, a dog abused. He tried to roll away. The glass in his leg crunched under his weight, and he screamed.

Josten spoke over the scene. “I wish it was, Jean, I really do. Because if it’s not, that means you came to us with betrayal in mind. That you’d pretended at no master when you were already collared. And that, that means-- there’s no hope for you, is there?”

“Please,” Jean jabbered, his voice choked with the blood that ran from his mouth and nose. He repeated it in French, a rat’s last gasp, swallowed, and again in English. “Please.”

“No, it’s alright. I speak French, as you know. We spoke it before.” _Before_ , as if they’d been pals around the table, as if Josten hadn’t fallen to silence after he’d chosen what he wanted to break on the man’s face. “Why won’t you speak it now? I’ve gotten rusty. I’d like to practice.”

The only answer came as sob, wet and broken. This was a creature who knew who he crossed, and knew his end was near. 

“Neil,” Renee breathed, a coil ready to spring by my side. I caught sight of a gun tucked behind her back, and thought of Jean reaching for something he couldn’t find. I didn’t think anyone but me could hear her, and yet Josten’s eyes slowly moved to her. 

In his distraction, Matt took up the plate. He set a foot on Jean’s shoulder, pressing him down onto his back. With the arm not bent an unnatural angle, he swung at Matt’s leg, his fist a panicked, pathetic bid for freedom. It stopped with another ugly wheeze when Matt stomped on his vulnerable stomach, and he struggled to turn over and vomit.

For what it was worth, Matt didn’t look like he enjoyed what he did to a man he’d not an hour before teased about blushing over Renee’s pretty eyes. He looked like he was doing a job: grim, determined, and set to finish it.

Renee seemed to turn over her words and choose them very, very carefully. “He is a man. Give him some dignity.”

That was not what Neil wanted to hear.

His mouth twisted, the scar on his face ever more hideous. “Like he gave Seth when he tipped off the coppers? Like he gave Kevin - his friend! Kevin thought him a friend! Like when he left his friend to rot, discarded in a dumpster?”

Renee, perhaps out of lingering, misguided affection, did not back down.

“Like you’ll give him, because you’re better than who came before you.”

That was assuredly not what Neil wanted to hear. The mockery on his face broke to manic fury, and then fell to that strange, twisted smile.

On the floor, Jean continued to choke and weep. He had eyes for none of us: squeezed shut, tears leaked at the corners. 

Renee didn’t beg for his life, I realized. She only asked for it to be swift.

Firm as a rock amid raging waters, she held her ground. I focused on breathing and keeping my knees from clattering too loudly.

When Josten spoke, the fire from before had left him. Now he spoke as a businessman about a tiresome project, his words weighted with reluctance.

“I would.” His free hand ran through his hair, setting the spikes even messier than before. “I would, I really would. I want to. I watched a few of your games, Jean. Wish I could’ve watched more. You were amazing. I know why the Raven picked you.”

Renee and Matt kept quiet. My eyes flitted between all of them.

Neil sighed, an explosive gust from a body that should’ve been bigger than it was.

“But he knows information that we need.”

At this, Renee’s breath hitched. Despite that sign, she nodded. Matt’s head bowed, his own face shadowed.

Neil gestured at the bleeding body as if he were sorry, but it had to go. 

“Take him to Andrew. I’m done here.”

At my brother’s name, Jean’s eyes flung open and he screamed like a stuck pig. He screamed in English, he begged in French, he pleaded in a messy mix of the two. He struggled for all he was worth, injuries forgotten in terror. Matt took to kicking him in the head until he at last shut up, his body slumping into unconsciousness. 

Josten neither replied nor looked back at any of it. He gestured to me to follow, and went for the door.

Renee’s hand was at her mouth, watching as Matt dragged the body to a larger crate. I couldn’t look at her, and I certainly couldn’t look at him. 

I followed.

 

 

“Aaron,” Neil began, then froze. It was the first thing he said since we had left that hellish basement, after we clambered into the back of a shining black four-seater that I had no hope in naming but every ounce of respect for its worth. I watched him from the corner of my eye, my heart barely calmed. “Sorry. Mr. Minyard.”

“Aaron’s fine,” I said.

He contemplated me for a moment, then shook his head. “Never bow to fear, professor. Give an inch and it’ll take a mile. I’m sorry you had to be there for that. I’d like to think that we’re both men, that it won’t ruin our chances to be frank with another.”

Funny he could say that after reducing a man to blood and tears. I kept quiet and directed my eyes to the back of the driver’s head.

“It’s _true_ ,” he repeated, his body swaying toward me as a wheel caught a pothole. “You've nothing to fear from me. If you’ve even an ounce of your brother in you, I swear it’s true.”

Jaw tensed, teeth ground together, my nostrils flared. Not two days in Baltimore, and my brother permeated every second of my interactions. _Fine_ , that was how it went with anything to do with Andrew -- but to think _him_ a gauge for _me_? My hands curled into my pants, their trembling shaking the iron-drenched block in my throat loose.

“How the hell can you say that, Josten?”

I regretted the words immediately. 

But I was scared, and angry, and cornered. My limbs locked up, sure he would produce a weapon and strike me.

Instead, he leaned back and scratched the side of his neck. He almost sounded sheepish as he switched topics.

“You were there because I needed you to see what you were getting into. These are trying times, Mr. Minyard. It’s not all paperwork.”

Obviously.

The Foxhole guests had once more been courteous in making way for me. It’s a bit embarrassing, but it took until I walked through the lobby with Josten to realize the reason even drunk dock-workers parted like waters before Moses’ staff for me: they thought I was my brother, and my brother deserved quite some space. I pretended to not see when one woman nearly knocked over her table in haste when she dragged her distracted date farther back than necessary.

Although a number of red-faced fools called out to Josten, none greeted me. By the half-way mark, two sharply dressed men broke from the throngs of people to flank our procession toward the door. It was indeed night, the speakeasy packed in the cool Saturday evening. Josten didn’t stop for small talk, but he did nod acknowledgements and return greetings to those who actively sought him out. As we passed, I heard a few men boasting that they’d ran the gauntlet for Crispy a month before. Their pals would guffaw and holler back disbelief.

They had no idea what happened under their feet. How, I wondered, could they not have heard? Had they, but it was so normal, _just another Saturday night on the town,_ that they didn’t care?

It left me with a sick feeling, my stomach nauseous and tight.

The only person Josten spoke with for more than two lines was a colored woman in a black shift dress, her hair in tight curls and clasped by a sequined orange band. The room’s din and my unwillingness to stand too close meant I missed his words, but by the end she nodded, grim and a little disgusted, and disappeared into the back. By the door, he took his jacket and hat from the coat rack and shrugged both on. Coat collar popped to his ears and leather gloves slid over scarred hands, one of the men who’d joined us pushed open the door, and out we went. His car waited at the curb. The driver took his spot, the other opened Crispy’s door, I opened my own, and in we climbed. After all four bodies settled on comfortable, new-smelling leather seats, the driver tore out like the devil was on our tail rather than lounging next to me.

Pink dots stained his cufflinks’ edges. I decided not to comment.

Silence beyond the engine’s rumble and clatter of wheel upon cobblestone stretched between us. The thought struck me that I didn’t know where he hoped to take me. Just as I mentally shook myself into asking, he cut me a glance with those ice-blue eyes and spoke.

“Where are you staying? The Blue Bell Inn?”

I nodded. I tried not to think of how he’d cowed me into nodding before. _It’s a question_ , I reasoned. _Not a threat._ My instincts didn’t listen.

“The manager and I go back a ways; he’s a smart man. Still, respectable as it is, you’d be better off moving in with your brother and me. We’ve a nice set up. Plenty of room. It’s even on the water.”

After all I’d seen - no matter what he said about my safety - it didn’t sound like a suggestion. My hands remained balled on my legs, my face turned away from him. Eventually his patience ran thin and he frowned at me.

“You look like you’ve got something to say. What is it?” His voice, absurdly, wasn’t cruel or prying. He sounded like he honestly didn’t know why I didn’t leap to move in with two apparent monsters. It wasn’t how I’d expected a mobster to react to being brushed off; in fact, it went against everything I expected.

“With all due respect,” I kept out the sir, though it crowded my mouth with spite, “my brother and I aren’t on the best of terms.”

He frowned further.

Miraculously, however, he dropped it.

Later as Baltimore’s inner city fell away from our windows and trees grew in the place of narrow city houses, he picked it back up.

“How about Nicky?”

Lost in thoughts that refused to stick on any one topic, I started at his voice and at last looked over with a frown of my own. Who?

The man’s eyebrows climbed up with a touch of amusement. “He’s your cousin, isn’t he? Nicholas Hemmick?”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed, a startled, half-way hysteric sound. Nicholas Hemmick - now there was a name I hadn’t heard in over a decade. About the same time I’d eloped with Katelyn and hadn’t given him our new address, in fact, and not for lack of his badgering. He’d known without _knowing_ that I’d planned to run. A godforsaken clingy bastard at the best of times, a day hadn’t gone by without his inviting me for lunch or dinner or drink or smoke.

 _Can’t you do anything on your own? Do you need me to hold your hand while you take a piss, too?_ I remembered snapping at him a day before Katelyn and I were set to leave. My nerves had been a wreck, positive my brother knew I’d bought a ring from the jeweler’s on the pier, my every waking moment in the city spent glancing over my shoulder. Katelyn and I only met where I knew Andrew wouldn’t venture: libraries, cafes, museums. Before Columbia, I’d never taken Katelyn to a dance hall, baseball game or pub, the things normal guys did with their sweethearts. She loved dancing.

He’d jerked back as if I’d slapped him. Although he had plenty of friendly schoolmates and held a wide circle of acquaintances, he never seemed to meet with them outside of projects and group outings. I’d never given much thought as to why. I knew Andrew gave him grief, but he wasn’t like me. He could’ve left the Minyards behind at any time.

It wasn’t the last thing I’d said to him, but it was probably the one to leave the biggest impression. 

Nicky hadn’t been on my mind in years. He wasn’t so bad to recall. Sure, he’d been annoying, but he’d kept me company well enough.

“Nicky’s in town?”

I knew I didn’t sound charitable (old habits die hard), but it didn’t deter Josten. Eyes kept on me, he said, “Even better. He’s running for governor.”

That didn’t shock me too much. At University, he’d been fascinated with administration and politics, and involved himself extensively with the anti-war protests; by the time he applied to Berlin, he spouted idealisms about bringing people together and inspiring progress to anyone who gave him half a second, just barely toeing the line of being labeled a Marxist. The thought, _and he’s in your good graces how?_ stuck out more.

Another thing I didn’t ask. So much for not biting my tongue. 

… Still. It wasn’t as if I had much of a leg to stand on in not being involved with the mob, myself.

“Alright.” I reluctantly acquiesced, and eyed Josten back. Now that I was looking at the guy, his ugly scar and all, it wasn’t so hard to keep up my courage. He was a slight man, built for agility, not power. The papers made me think every crime boss had to come with a beer gut and flashing golden rings; when he wasn't filling a room with violence, Neil looked like he could disappear into the ether if you didn’t watch close enough. “It isn’t a problem for you to show up on a governor’s front porch unannounced.” That wasn’t a question.

Josten huffed a laugh, a small, breathy sound. It settled the deal with a swiftness I didn’t fully grasp. “He’s not governor yet.”


	5. RENEE WALKER

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings for this chapter** : some schmoozing, implied sex, graphic violence, past/present torture, suicidal intentions. please read with care. the next chapter has similar issues. honestly if you ctrl+f your way to "Tetsuji Moriyama works out of New York" and read from there, you'll catch the most plot-related details and miss the problematic stuff.
> 
> (I would fight to the ends of the earth for Jean Moreau [thus, probably, why this chapter got so long]. That said.......... Reading Nora's extra content about him, and considering where this AU universe put everyone, I'm rrrreally sorry.)

I’d watched him for two weeks before we first spoke. 

I watch a lot of people from all walks of life, both from hobby and request. People weren’t kind, they weren’t good, but they were amazing, and I loved them with wholehearted respect. For him, it began at Neil’s behest and took on shades of enjoyable hobby between one day and the next. Mostly I watched him through a speakeasy’s yellow haze, my own drink nothing but soda and his attention taken up by impressing his new mates.

He’d came to the foxes as a man with no job but plenty of pride. He _tried_ , I could tell; he tried hard to fall in line and joke and jest with the rest of them. But our people are a rowdy, mismashed bunch, the best of the barrel’s bottom, and his pedigree showed in alternating hesitance and disgust at the camaraderie Boyd’s boys enjoyed. Though he did not say, he thought our alcohol poor, our management sloppy, and our wide-open hospitality foolish. He couldn’t understand how we had fingers in so many pies. Eventually he snapped, scorn bubbled up, his response to anything close to an insult, well-intentioned or otherwise, a curled lip, sneer and cold shoulder. That he didn’t go out of his way to cause trouble was his only saving grace. 

The thing about the abused is their sensitivity to mockery. People learned he wasn’t fun, and put him to the outskirts; they called him a frog and little else; as I watched, more and more he sat silent at the bar’s end, eyes trained on his emptied-and-filled-and-emptied-and-filled glass with particular hatred that I wasn’t sure was entirely directed at his new coworkers or bad bootleg. Strong hands, methodical perfectionism and straight-forward, highly effective intimidation tactics kept him within our ranks, though he drank far too much when off the clock. It wasn’t a usual thing, a man keeping his place without getting on with his crew, but he was very, very good.

But of course he was. The Raven’s long-standing bosom buddy, Jean “The Frenchman” Moreau, would have to be nothing less than one of the best, even if a boxer wasn’t technically a bodyguard. _One of the best_ \- the third best turned second best after the Baby Boy’s accident, insofar as the rankings went. 

Shame age forced him into retirement. He couldn’t have been more than two years older than the Raven.

Kevin didn’t think it was his years that forced his hand, and Neil agreed. 

Thus: I watched.

Surrounded by bare shoulders and flashing beads, I often stood out like a sore thumb. Sometimes this worked in my favor, but sometimes, it made things so much harder. 

Moreau lived up to his nickname in literal and stereotypical fashion. Admittedly, for all his failings with his fellows, he charmed the ladies: he bought them drinks and danced slow, treating each with an intensity that couldn’t be healthy but which wooed most girls under its weight. It looked like he fell in love every night, but within the next establishment her face would change and he wouldn’t so much as blink. Open as he was for company, it was an easy path to his good graces. 

I wouldn’t do anything but slow, and I certainly wouldn’t lift my skirts for a job. Barring special requests like this,  
most of my contributions happened behind closed doors and with the scratch of pen on paper. But I could manage myself, and I’d yet to fail a job I set my mind to. 

The first time we spoke was in Eden’s Twilight, the fox’s second home-away-from-home. The past three days saw Jean’s group running protection on Erdman Avenue, their second taste of a real gig: most of the boys celebrated with cheers and a whole lot of bootleg, and the good mood meant even the Frenchman was included in the festivities. He didn’t seem to know what to do with the shoulder-clapping and happy whooping; he drowned his uncertainty in far too much alcohol. Thereafter, it wasn’t long before his gaze wandered. Waiting by the bar nursing a coke, I caught Jean’s eyes. He looked at me like he looked at the other girls, without recognition or care, but then seemed to take in all of me (long skirts, long sleeves, long hair) and moved his eyes to a different target. Fortunately, she sat right next to me.

I intercepted him on his way to her. My first word to him was, “Sorry!” followed by, “Oh! Aren’t you the Frenchman?”

The nickname was sillier than most, I thought. His accent, light though it was, spoke for itself. In any case, he grumped momentarily at being thrown off his path, but was polite enough to answer that yes, yes, he was, though he hadn’t been in the ring for a while. Had I heard of him? His eyes and expression, no matter the well-rehearsed lines, stood nowhere close to friendly.

“I saw one of your matches, actually.” I answered honestly, undeterred. 

Eyebrows pinched, he - surprisingly - did not ask what a lady was doing watching a grizzly sport like boxing. Instead, he asked when and against whom, and if I frequented the events, and (when I answered positively) what I thought of the current rankings. Before long, we leant together on the bar discussing the ins and outs of different blocks, the dame he’d originally been making for gone to the dance floor laughing with Davie.

He was surprisingly respectful of my interest, slipping up only with a laugh when I said I hoped the women’s league went professional soon. Even then, he had the grace to look abashed when I sipped my drink and didn’t brush my words off. 

Thank Goodness for Kevin Day frequenting Neil’s house. I did have a healthy interest in boxing, but there was no way I could have kept up with Jean’s extensive insider knowledge without having overheard Kevin and Neil’s late-night debates on proper technique and up-keep, and the laziness inherent to certain up-and-coming names’ forms. Occasionally an argument over the inside and upper cuts would grow so heated the two would shuck their jackets, wrap their hands and practice in the living room, threatening everyone and everything within arm’s length. If Neil hadn’t taken his path, I’m sure he would have been a boxer. As it was-- maybe in another life.

As I thought, Moreau starved for good conversation and company. We spoke for a good hour on boxing; after that, he asked if he could buy me a drink, and I confessed I was a dry, watching for his reaction. He hesitated, another not-what-he-expected moment, but then, haltingly, offered to pay for a soda. Some might have done it just to be polite, but I didn’t think so. I smiled, accepted, and we kept on chatting. When it was time to go, the trolleys minutes from their last runs, he snagged my arm before I could leave. 

“Ms. Walker,” he beseeched, his cheeks dusted in pink from beer, “I, that is - I’ve seen you before. Do you come here often?”

It should have sounded trite and corny. What shocked me was his lack of pleading that I _remain_ ; most men in speakeasies felt their time wasted if the girl left without even a kiss. For that, as well as my job to watch him, I smiled and said, “Actually, I was thinking of going to the Foxhole tomorrow night. Are you free?”

He nodded, the pink on his cheeks deepening. Then he cleared his throat and released my arm, gaze averted.

“I am.” His accent thickened with drink and emotion, I’d found. Right then, his consonants slurred into his vowels and made English a reluctant lass. “Perhaps we’ll meet again.”

I laughed, light and easy. He cleared his throat again. “Perhaps. Have a good night, Mr. Moreau.”

“And you,” he said, but by then, I was headed for the door.

We quickly graduated to first names, as we met a second, third, fifth time, boxing and Baltimore and other not-about-the-foxes topics always at the center of our conversations. It came to be that he grew more at ease with his fellows - Matt informed me he was much less uppity with his equals and, if not patient, at least less prone to pretending deafness; flagrant alcoholism continued to be an issue, but by then I could only see echoes of Kevin in it-, but despite his slow integration into the group, he always perked up most when I entered the room. He wasn’t subtle with his affection, and I admit I didn’t do much to stem it. He never presumed, only offered his arm when we crossed streets, pulled out chairs and held doors open, but the longer it went without a shred of romance, the more it seemed to make him uncomfortable. I would have assumed it was because he wasn’t getting what he wanted, but that didn’t truly fit in the person I was learning him to be. He stopped picking up other dames, insofar as I was aware. I wondered if it had to do with the rumors tying me to Neil and Andrew, but they specifically left me to my own devices when it came to visiting Jean. It wouldn’t have done to dredge up Jean’s feelings of petty, misguided challenge... If he even had any. Though distant with his crew, his competitiveness startled me -- that is, his absolute lack of it. Outside of the ring, he didn’t seem to want to _excel_ at anything. 

He didn’t slack. Matt never would have let that slide. But he didn’t put heart into any decision, and rarely volunteered his own opinions if they weren’t about an immediately relevant, work-related shortcoming (or, boxing).

In the midst of a conversation on the recovery in France- it turned out he still had quite a bit of family near Nice--, his discomfort grew to the point that I had to address it or reconsider our close companionship.

“Jean,” I said, bumped our shoulders and pretended not to see how tense he grew, “is something on your mind?”

“Yes. My uncle and aunt have lost half their stock to pests. My aunt says she has a bump the size of an egg on her rump, and it makes it very hard for her to sit.” 

I smiled. Those sort of comments were his idea of a joke; endearing, in their own way. “Besides France,” I coaxed, not to be deterred, and bumped our shoulders again. This time, I didn’t move away. He did, though, after a second, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “Are you alright?”

“I-- don’t want to ruin what we have,” he said, in both a rare show of vulnerability and cutting to the chase, “and my question might.”

The honesty impressed me. Neil was right to have Jean watched: he didn’t speak frankly of anything but criticisms, and his stories from before he joined were too simple to be fully trusted. 

“Why’s that?” I asked, though I knew full well what he meant. I leaned ever closer, my head tilted obligingly. I knew what I was doing.

(I did not lift my skirts upon request.)

“It’s,” he started, then stopped. When he began again, the arrogant Frenchman of our first few meetings resurfaced: he bordered presumptuousness - he bordered insult, when it came to my ideas of how a man should talk to a woman ( _with respect_ ). “Tomorrow afternoon, meet me at Stacy’s?” 

It wasn’t the charm he’d worked on the girls before me, and that alone kept me from cutting the wind from his sails. Instead, I turned it over, turned him over, and then hummed.

He watched me with enough detachment to show me that he cared too much.

“I’m afraid I’m busy tomorrow,” I said, and he almost collapsed, his expression dropped so fast. But then, “Though I’m free Monday. How about then? I’ve heard Stacy’s has an incredible lobster bisque.”

“Really?” He said, as if he were a boy chosen first when he thought he had no chance. The arrogance dropped, and his face opened up, like a sunflower unfurling for the sun. 

My smile grew, heart tender despite itself.

“Really.”

We met like that, a man and woman on a proper lunch date. He dared to reach for my hand over the table, and he walked me back to my single apartment like the sidewalk was made of clouds. We met a few more times. He dared to do more than hold my hand, and I let him, where prying eyes couldn’t see.

People assume because of my devotion that I’m a prude, that I won’t have kissed anyone before marriage, let alone loosened my blouse. In truth, I simply know what I want from a relationship, and very few satisfied it - and out of those who do, even fewer aligned with my line of work. In one way or another, Jean Moreau managed to keep his head and remain a gentleman, and altogether worm his way into my arms. All this in spite of his years before slinking into the fox’s den, something I learn of in fits and bursts.

There’s nothing I wouldn’t have learned given enough time with him in the daylight, but he wasn’t the only one making choices. 

The first time I heard him speak French wasn’t long after the first time he unbuttoned my blouse. On my narrow cloth couch, legs entangled and his head under my chin, he murmured sleepy words into my skin. Amused - he was never so at ease to lay about like a well-muscled log, his shirt and pants on but terribly rumpled - I brushed the hair from his damp forehead and asked, “What did you say?”

It took a moment, but he repeated it, louder. It wasn’t anything I recognized, so it couldn’t have been a phrase too stereotypically sappy. 

Without a drop of French knowledge in my mind, I hummed and tweaked his ear. He grumbled another phrase, his nose tickling my neck, and just like that, another wall came down.

After well-intentioned teasing about how he never wooed me in romance’s truest language, I found he refused to speak his native tongue in public. It wasn’t the worry of an immigrant fresh off the boat at being assumed ignorant to the English language, but something deeper that had him glancing around furtively whenever I brought it up too loudly. Fortunately for his nerves, I did so only twice before I cottoned on. After that, I kept it to private kitchens and bedrooms, egging him onto teaching me the word for apple or dog or _you’ve nice arms_ or _pick me up._ Then it was a matter of not spooking the rabbit: gently, with space and time, I learned the Raven wasn’t so fond of French, or of most things he didn’t understand, but he understood cruelty quite well.

With me, Kevin kept a tight lid on Riko. Neil must have known more-- and Andrew might have known the most- but it was fine. I wasn’t where I was because I was blind to people’s fears. The Raven kept a tight leash on those he trained with, which included the Frenchman and Baby Boy. Though no team sport, the best gyms hosted the best boxers, and when it was your career, those sandbags and weights became your life. They lifted together. They ran together. They ate together, drank together, did all but sleep together, and Riko acted enough like he owned the gym and everyone in it that those around him began to believe it. If Riko didn’t want you taking a vacation or visiting family, then you didn’t. _It’s how it is_ , Jean said with an unconcerned shrug.

There was more to that story, but at that moment, I only knew the tip of it.

As time passed and the Raven didn’t manifest to break his face for an implication of disagreement, Jean told me more. As I’d said, they came in fits and bursts: one moment we mixed our own fruit cocktail cups with marshmellows and powdered sugar, the next he mentioned Riko’s peculiar dietary experiments and the horrid muscle cramps drinking the bay’s salt water brought around. One moment we watched Cleopatra’s exotic romance at the pictures; the next, I learned a prolonged ice bath swelled the fingers so badly they couldn’t fit into a glove without force, and how loud blood rushed in your ears and how precious air seemed after being held underwater.

These things weren’t entirely startling given our world, but I had come to care for the man. He was a victim as much as Kevin.

Because he wasn’t a fool, Andrew asked if Jean was going to be a problem for me. I said no.

In between tragedies, I learned what I wanted to. The Raven preferred this restaurant and that hotel. He favored this tailor that he drove to New York to see. The apartment he took his fellow trainees to after practice was on that street, the first floor bought out by his uncle to keep out nosy neighbors. Sometimes his uncle’s bookies met there. Usually on Thursdays, before big games.

 _Do you still talk with him?_ I asked in halting French, which always softened the corners of his eyes.

 _Yes_ , he’d said, distracted by pride of how far I’d come. _I must. You understand. He’s never very far._

He called Riko _the King_ when he felt most at ease. In that moment, he did.

I kissed him and closed my eyes.

It may have been a few months since he’d joined our roster, but Jean was still a fresh fox. That his group was at Eden’s Twilight the night Seth died wasn’t a coincidence: they’d been assigned as bouncers, a rotation perfectly, believably routine. They were supposed to be working, not drinking, and yet of the three who weren’t carted off by the police, only Frank and Jean managed to make it out of the raid clean-handed. Stevie, according to them, had slipped in the rush to relocate the bootleg, and broken his head on a rail-post. The body was found two blocks from the speakeasy just as they’d said, though Matt noted Stevie’s tommy continued to be unaccounted for.

It was a disaster. Damage control with Roland cost us hundreds, smuggle routes for drink and drug had to be reconfigured, and Police Inspector Higgins paid double to get clean policemen out of the district. Higgins admitted he had no idea where the clean coppers came from, that they hadn’t passed through typical recruitment, to which Andrew nearly took off his head. Eden’s Twilight barely remained standing.

When Neil came to me with the cold look of a man betrayed, I had no choice. We’d suspected - Stevie had been my other top guess - but now it was undeniable. Jean was our rat, and I knew it. Then Neil knew it, and Matt knew it, and Andrew knew it but was much more caught up in his brother’s arrival (though he never would have admitted so), and the night before I had to fetch Aaron I paid Jean a surprise visit. 

I brought him a chocolate eclair that I baked myself, and cajoled him into sharing it with me right then and there. The raid had left him shook up - it was the second time someone in his crew had died, he said, but he’d never imagined the entire group could be wiped out like that. His hands shook, and his eyes flitted nervously from me to the windows. I agreed, equally quiet, and then chased the pastry’s icing across his bottom lip.

The noise he made was surprised, a quiet _huff_ that turned into a pleased hum when I pulled back and looked at him through my eyelashes. His hands settled on my hips, pads of his fingers rubbing circles over cotton. He was as every bit respectful as I’d thought he’d be - time warmed the word, made his dark eyes affectionate and fond. 

“How about cards?” I asked. 

His eyebrows jumped, but with only the barest, “Bit late to start, isn’t it? We’ll be up all night,” he fetched a deck and we sat at his small, rickety table, our knees bumping.

He won the first hand - I toed at his ankle with a stockinged foot. He won the second hand, anxiety working its way out of hunched shoulders, and met my eyes when my foot skimmed his calf. He lost the first full round, and the first few buttons on my blouse loosened.

“Your deal,” I reminded him, gentle as a spring breeze. He didn’t fumble the cards, but it was a near thing, and I smothered a giggle. 

He lost the first hand of the second round by sheer luck, his cheeks and ears pink, my foot running the length of his thigh. Then he lost the second full round, shifting every few seconds in his seat, and I watched the shudder run through him when I pushed my heel against a hard line in his pants, and smothered another giggle at the glare he failed miserably to send me. Given his competitive streak - even considering the alternatives -, I was a little amazed I got away with this much without a rebuke. I worked a small, measured rhythm without acknowledging how he leaned heavily on the table, cards clasped in loose fingers, mouth open and eyes lidded. 

“ _Mon amour_ ,” the endearment high and edged in question. Not demand. He never demanded, never presumed, and rarely out-right asked in matters like this.

“ _Pick me up,_ ” I matched his language and sat back, feet crossed under my chair, my head tilted.

I finally laughed at how he scrambled to comply, sweeping me out of my seat and carrying me like a bride to his narrow bed. 

That gentle night left an acrid taste in my mouth: calloused hands and rucked up skirts, him on his knees and me pressing him down, his feverish praise and not a single English word, the _three_ inked on his collarbone ever present and ever damming. 

(I covered it up with my hand whenever I could without being obvious, though honestly, he hid it from me just as much.)

Incredibly, he never asked me why the boss’s supposed gun moll was messing around with a common thug. I suppose he still thought himself high on the food chain, no matter the reminders. Or maybe he just enjoyed our time, and compartmentalized the problem away.

Knowing him, the latter seemed likely.

Aaron turned out smarter than Andrew led me to believe. I shouldn’t have been surprised: having met both twins, they clearly had disagreements they were willing to die before working out.

Three days after Neil’s intervention, I caught a cab to their home on the bay. By some standards it looked akin to a mansion, but it was the smallest property on the water’s wealthier side: two stories, four bedrooms, two and a half baths, a dining hall and fully equipped kitchen, it boasted a servant’s entrance and a porch that wrapped around the beach’s side. Painted a kind creamy color with a dark, slanted roof, it was a young house meant for a family on vacation. Instead, two men remained year-round in its plainly decorated halls, a live-in maid the only concession to its size.

It didn’t take long after knocking that the door swung open. I smiled. “Good evening, Robin.” 

“Good evening, Ms. Renee,” she piped back with a small smile of her own. Despite however much I tried, she wouldn’t let go of the ‘miss.’ “You’re here for Mr. Minyard?”

“That’s right.”

“He’s in the dining hall. You came at the best time - he’s in a good mood, _well_ , as much as he’s ever. I’ll brew up something hot while you two talk.”

“Oh, I won’t be that long.”

“I wouldn’t be worth my salt if I let a guest come and go without putting something warm in her belly, Ms. Renee!”

With a smile, I let it go. 

Slight in stature and size, Robin joined the household as its singular staff two years prior. Reserved and anxious at the best of times, it’d taken months for her to warm up to her employers, let alone me. Although she took care of the cleaning and cooking and the house would shortly become a disaster on her leaving, I privately theorized she was more of an alarm system than a necessity; for one thing, Josten hosted parties exclusively at his second, larger house, and as far as I knew, Robin never staffed those. 

Just as Robin said, Andrew sat back on a plush dining chair at the oaken table’s head, a cigarette dangling from his mouth and his hands behind his head. The dark curtains behind him were shut tight. Their house was decorated as if by someone else, someone with a sense of propriety and absolutely no personality; I wouldn’t have been surprised to find they’d kept everything exactly as the last owner left it. 

(Plus two cats, but who knew where they were.)

I knew better than to comment on his mood, though that he lounged back without a drink lent credit to Robin’s observation. The idea itself softened my smile; I'd road with Abby and Wymack when they picked him up from the mental facility by Boston, its rusted iron gates and intimidating stone facade a lasting impression in my memories ( _and how white Abby's face was when they emerged, her hands reaching and flinching and reaching and flinching again for the blank-faced Andrew's arms, Wymack looking over his shoulder even though Andrew was legally cleared to leave, like he thought an orderly might leap from the doors and drag them back in for good ---_ any place that could put a look like that on their faces when they'd visited for less than thirty minutes was a memorable one). It was good to have him back and looking more like himself again. Neil had to feel the same, though he'd never admit it to me.

His eyes flicked to me for a brief moment before returning to the ceiling. I kept my smile and took a seat.

Somehow, possibly from exposure, I could guess talking about Aaron wasn’t the best opener. So, instead: “Are those the new Marlboros?”

“It’s funny.” Smoke eddied from his mouth, his voice a musing, unamused thing. It dashed my smile. “I seem to remember you saying he wouldn’t be a problem.”

In my lap, my hands remained very still. “I wasn’t lying.”

Seth Gordon would have room to disagree on my definition, but Andrew hadn’t meant whether Jean would be a problem for Seth Gordon. Some foxes believed Andrew was as willing to let the Foxhole and its associates burn as he was to let a man bleed if not for Josten-- I, in truth, numbered among them.

“Then,” he drawled after a long, long pause, “I can’t fathom why you’re here.” 

“Andrew.” His fingers flicked at me as if shooing a pest. I was not one to make bargains. Neither was he. But sometimes-- “Let me talk to him.”

“You’re not helping your case, Miss Walker.”

“You could let him wither away for a week, or be finished tonight. In both scenarios, you’ll have what Josten wants.”

Plucking the cigarette from his mouth to tap ash into a tray, he continued to ignore my eyes. “The fish aren’t hungry.”

“They will be.”

“You’re pressing your luck, girl.” 

I bit my tongue and didn’t blink. 

Eventually he met my eyes, his gaze sharp and unimpressed. His cigarette crumbled to ash, and Robin brought green tea for me and cream-sweet coffee for him, an anxious glance sent between us as she bowed and left. When he finally spoke, I dropped my eyes to my tea.

“Check the locker.” With the admission, disinterest returned. Focus moved to his coffee, he put on like he'd forgotten my presence entirely. It was a dismissal above anything else, and I took it (and my tea). By the doorway, I paused; he said, arguably to himself, “Twenty minutes. No longer.”

He was probably annoyed that Josten softened him up enough to make allowances like this. I never thought I’d see the day.

Grim, I continued onward to the first floor’s study.

Off the blueprints, the house sat atop a sound-proof basement with a wide, non-sewage pipeline to the bay. It sank a little more every year, its heavy foundations barely kept afloat on the beach-front’s high water table. The first project to be completed on the Josten and Minyard property, its entrance hidden under a rug in a converted bedroom, it saw more use than I’d have liked.

Down rickety wooden steps were two metal doors with the locking mechanisms on the outsides, the only light arising from two bare bulbs. A steel basin, its metal stained brown despite lacking rust, sat under a spigot and, above that, a large chute. Its lack of decor was in part disinterest (thus why I thought they’d kept the previous owner’s) and part pointed atmosphere. Robin, as far as I knew, must have known it existed, but had never visited its depths. 

Misery slunk in every crack and crevice of this place. It hoarded what it witnessed like a jealous lover, possessive enough to never want those who walked within to leave.

Pulling open the door on the right, I flicked on the light and, pinching my nose closed, shut it behind me. The metal was heavy, its hinges poorly balanced for just the reason I counted on: even if Jean was quick enough to move past me, it’d take him a while to open.

Eyeing the locker, I really didn’t think that would be a concern. I set my tea by the door.

Andrew was a man of simplicity no matter what extravagant rumors people spread about him (I’m sure he encouraged each and every one). The locker was exactly what it sounded like: an appropriated gym cabinet set up in the square room’s corner, thicker walls and double deadbolted locks alone distinguishing it from its cousins. I quieted my mind, privately asked forgiveness, and did as I set out to do.

When the lights came on, the locker’s walls clanged. The room stank. Unlocking the door and pulling it open, the room’s stench grew pungent, the thick, cloying smell reserved for the dying and dead. Sand poured around my ankles and skirts, enough to fill a good quarter of the locker; bound in thick rope, he would have tumbled onto his face if I hadn’t caught him. It may have well been three days since he’d eaten, but Jean Moreau was no lightweight; I staggered, swayed, caught my shoulder on the locker’s edge, and slid us both down.

Bloodshot eyes stared up at me, the whole of his body trembling. Small, inarticulate noises huffed out of a cracked, bloodied mouth, and oh, he looked like such a mess. 

“Jean,” I started, but he cut me off with a hard flinch, body curling up. Biting the inside of my cheek, I fell silent, checking him over to give him time. Matt had fractured his arm, and it hadn’t been set. Same with his nose. Behind his back, three fingers lacked their nails, the puffy skin tinged green. His clothes stuck to him with sweat, blood and excrement; his swollen feet looked painful, if not impossible, to move. Red peppered him like the pox, small inflamed dots collecting in varying concentrations across exposed skin and under clothing. Little gestures being the best I could offer him, I brushed dried flecks from his forehead. 

Then I grimaced and shook out my hand, eyes tracking the insects I’d accidentally dislodged. It didn’t take long from there to notice the red ants: they swarmed the spilled sand as well as Jean, upset at their home’s destruction, undoubtedly furious their problems upgraded from one human to two (and this one without binds!).

_That was… new._

The abrupt movement kick-started his fear: a cracked voice pleaded for me to end it, pupils shrunk to terrified pin-pricks (or because of the light, I couldn’t be sure), his struggles hardly more than reflexive jerks, and I recalled why I hadn’t the stomach for this sort of thing.

It took precious time and spurred Jean into dry, heaving breaths, his panic enough I feared he’d rip apart his throat in throwing up nothing, but I dragged us from the sands to the door, brushed away ants as they made themselves known, and coaxed him into taking sips of lukewarm tea. Well, that’s not quite the right description: I kept him from choking, he drank so greedily, and murmured placating sounds all the while. 

“Ssh, shhh.” 

Eventually he wore himself out. A man over a head taller than me, curled like a child in my lap, everything about him dripping in exhaustion. Tea finished, the cup overturned on its side, an ant puzzling at it with its antennas.

Ignoring whatever stains I might later find, I kept my voice low and my cheek pressed to his crown, “Jean, you need to tell me about Riko’s uncle.”

Although weak, he shook his head. A massive shiver raced through his frame, an anguished moan rattling its way from his chest.

“Please.” I swallowed, breathed. Choked briefly on the smell. Counted to five. “Riko can’t reach you here. This isn’t his kingdom.”

He said something so quiet I couldn’t catch it.

“What?”

Another pause, our time ticked by, and then:

“Let me die.”

My eyes squeezed shut.

There was a reason I didn’t participate in interrogation.

“After,” I promised, because it was what he needed to hear. “After.”

I thought that was it. We’d sit in silence until Andrew came knocking, and he’d live a week or two longer in absolute agony. Andrew would out-last him in the way Andrew out-lasted everyone, unmoving and unaffected and with full comprehension of suffering worse than death. 

Despite his pain and terror and years of being brow-beaten into submission, he gave me an answer.

In fits and bursts: _Tetsuji Moriyama works out of New York. He works the gambling circuit, but his nephew, Ichirou, truly runs the show. Ichirou’s father, Kengo, had strong ties with Wesninski, ones he passed down to Ichirou after illness took him. Josten refusing to negotiate with Ichirou wasn’t part of the plan._

Kengo, a man less than six months dead, and, of course, Wesninski, they rang bells - but we hardly knew anything about Ichirou other than his supposed inheritance of his father’s empire. Hands gentle on his bowed back, fingers running over bumps and grooves where bugs bit and old wounds hadn’t healed, I pressed on. “What about now?” 

“Josten’s been good at keeping the east coast under his thumb. But now that he’s expanding… With the campaign, and putting Kevin on track for nationals... The Moriyamas want him to know he’s overstepping his bounds.” A shuddering breath, wracked thereafter with a coughing fit. Leaning heavier on me, as starved for warmth as he’d ever been, his eyes dropped closed. “They sent me as the first warning. They’re sending his uncle with the last. If he doesn’t agree to Hatford’s terms, it won’t be long.”

He couldn’t stop there. Legs shifted to keep both of us comfortable, he hissed as I worked fingers into his hands’ ropes and loosened them. I needed to know the terms. I needed to know the pitfalls. “Before?”

For a moment, the problem seemed to be words: he struggled, teeth biting his lower lip bloody, and then deflated again, fight gone. “It won’t be long.”

“Jean---”

 _Not now_ , but prayers alone didn’t solve troubles. Two knocks on the door shattered whatever progress I’d made: Jean’s entire body stiffened, his head jerked up so fast it clipped me in the jaw. That must have been the clang I’d heard when I’d arrived- his skull on the locker’s interior. 

“Jean, listen to me,” I tried in a heated whisper as shudders began to once again wrack his frame, his breathing regaining its erratic note, “concentrate on my voice. It won’t be long before what?”

“Kill me,” was his response, his eyes squeezed shut and jaw clenched, “you, you- said you would, please, _kill me_ before he puts me… back there. Kill me!”

“Are you finished?” 

The creak of a door and Andrew’s monotone. Slowly I unclenched my hand from Jean’s shoulder; without even an accusation of betrayal, he fell forward off my lap and struggled away, the sounds from his mouth nothing but panicked, a hobbled, wounded animal making its last lonely attempt for survival.

I watched him for a moment, accepting the sorrow in my chest. 

Perhaps I could have learned his identity sooner and helped him negotiate for his life. Neil treated outcasts and run-aways like family. He hadn’t been lying that day in the Foxhole. We could’ve protected Jean, no matter what he thought.

But that wasn’t how people worked. Perhaps in another life.

“I’m finished.” In this life, I stood and brushed an ant from my brown-stained skirts. I caught Andrew’s eyes, but didn’t hold them. Behind me, Jean Moreau continued to sob in great, gasping breaths. “So is he.”

Andrew contemplated my estimation for a brief moment, his head cocked to one side. But whatever he saw in my passing him seemed to be enough; he didn’t follow me out. As I left, a curved blade winked at me from his hand.

The walls were sound-proof, but I wasn’t yet above-ground when Jean’s begging choked off into silence.

If my memory served correctly, the Friends meeting house on the south side held sessions on Wednesday morning. I think I’d like to attend.


	6. JEAN MOREAU

I wished I had thanked her.

The knife fulfilled its purpose and nothing more.


	7. AARON MINYARD

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings for this chapter:** pretty intense homophobia, including slurs.

Time passed. The first weekend turned into a second weekend turned into my calling Katelyn to explain, tight-lipped and white-knuckled, that it’d be at least a month before I returned. She took the time period with hurt acceptance; I promised to call as often as I could, and told her the place I lived in had its own telephone, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. The only thing that got her from twisting my ear about it was that I promised to explain completely with a letter I spent days composing.

(As I’d been told multiple, I couldn’t expressly name anyone or any operation. Written word, however, allowed much more freedom, and ‘my brother’ explained more to Katelyn than it did to most).

Matt Boyd and his girlfriend, Dan Wilds, proved to be good people. They were presumptuous, but I could see why they were so loyal to the boss, Josten: they made much larger names for themselves without sacrificing much pride than they otherwise would have, and the pay was incredible.

(That was the other reason Katelyn didn’t question me so much, I think. Along with my letter, I sent my first week’s pay.)

(She didn’t need to know it was illegally bought).

True to Boyd’s word, most of my job had me tied to a desk. It wasn’t unfamiliar, taking numbers and figures and faces and grading the worth of one over the other. In fact, I preferred it: if I wasn’t in the tight, cramped, paper-filled space (half useful documents, half not, all set to a code as if we ran a construction business, which was Boyd’s official front), Wilds or Boyd dragged me to the Foxhole to keep acquainted with Josten’s men. They proved to be as fevered and rowdy on a normal night as they were on Saturday. The only relevant bit of information I cared to learn was that though almost all of the patrons worked in some form for Josten, whether his official or unofficial business, only a quarter or so counted as ‘foxes.’ The men I’d met in the basement, the ones Josten deigned to reply to when heading for his car: these were the ones that mattered beyond financial numbers and liability. A number of those who thought themselves in the core group weren’t. But those who were understood their prestidge very well.

It was a stupid way to label a mob group, if you asked me. Thugs were animals by nature - no need to exasperate it with a repetitive nickname like the _foxes._ No one asked me, of course. 

Time passed.

I moved in with Nicky.

I moved in with Nicky and… his friend.

“Erik Klose?”

“My cousin. Er, our cousin? No, definitely-- he’s- only my cousin, he’s from my mom’s side.”

He’d been giving me a tour of his (very respectable, very large) house. Equipped with a butler and full cooking and cleaning staff, he’d made a nice name for himself. Despite this, he had no wife, and -- in her place, Erik Klose. He had a bedroom of his own - Nicky had showed me it. It barely looked lived in.

“Your mother isn’t German.”

“I, ah--”

We’d stared at each other, my face blank and his miserable. Mouth opening and tongue stumbling and mouth closing, Nicky backpedaled.

“His family was in a bad way after the Great War.” This must have been what he told those who asked too much. “He’d been great to me in Berlin. It was the least I could do, offering him a place to stay in America.”

Nicky, the almost Marxist.

Nicky, the champion of underdogs.

Nicky, best dancer but never a girlfriend, never so much as a quickie in the dorm rooms, always dodging questions about engagements and women and Jesus, I’d been blind as a bat.

Disgust welled heavy on my tongue. Before arriving, I’d planned to absolve some of my guilt on leaving my cousin as I had. As if we’d never had a falling out, as if I’d never left, he’d led me cheerily around his property, all pride and glowing smiles and only the barest hint of anxiousness. In the beginning of our reunion, it’d only made my guilt grow. Now, that seemed a trifling thing. 

“Aaron--” He begged the moment he saw I began to turn away, snatching my suitcase from what was supposed to be my bedroom. “Aaron, wait! It isn’t what you think!”

He reached for my arm; I shrugged him off, hard, and snarled, “Get your filthy hands off me, you damned fairy!”

Just as before, he flinched back as if struck. Once again, I felt no remorse, my thoughts racing.

“I’m not a fairy!”

“Oh, no. You’d rather fuck your _cousin._ ” I turned on him, my back straight and chin squared, a sneer on my lips. “Well, here I am, _your cousin._ Are you going to try to crawl into my bed, too?”

This time, it was as if I’d ran him through with a sword. The color drained from his face, his hands frozen mid-air. As words failed him, my heart hammered, adrenaline and realization striking me deep. For a moment, we stood like that: me, scowling, and him, in his nice house with a good name and reputation, riding the coattails of a mobster’s success.

That fellow, Jean, bloody and broken, flashed in my mind. The way people crowed Josten’s name as if it were worth respecting. Here, my cousin, respected by his peers, dirty to his core. My cousin. 

It felt like I was floating.

“You’re a real piece of work, Nicky. A real, _real_ piece of work. You’ve got so much going for you here, and you’re throwing it away for some perverted fantasy?”

At this, he regained color: ugly splotches of pink along his cheeks and neck, his hands dropping to his sides.

“Take that back, Aaron. Don’t belittle Erik.”

Lip curled, I traded a guffaw for a disbelieving, “Are you serious?”

“ _Yes_ ,” he snapped back, taking a step forward. “Say what you want about me, but this isn’t a- a dirty fling. He’s helped me a lot, you know? He-- oh, god, Aaron, not like _that._ For fuck’s sake!”

Unapologetic for whatever face I’d made, I turned it into a scowl.

He ran a frenzied hand through his hair, the points sticking up afterward. He watched me like I was a second from calling the police-- which I wouldn’t have, I wasn’t that stupid (Nicky’s deviancy was not what the police had to worry about), a bit of backbone nonetheless lining his words. 

“We’re not some,” inarticulate, hands wringing themselves, he stuttered to a restart. “We don’t want to be dames, we don’t do up our faces with make-up, we don’t sell ourselves to whatever sap’s willing to look twice. He’s a normal fellow. I’m a normal fellow.”

“You’re a pervert,” I corrected, because I may not think the police needed involving, but it was the truth.

“I-- maybe, yes, okay? Yes, fine, we’re-- perverts. But we keep normal jobs! Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Only because no one knows.”

“Doesn’t that-- doesn’t that prove we can be normal? Outside of, what we do, privately, between us?”

“I can’t believe you.” Disgusting. _Disgusting._ “You work for a _mobster_ , Nicky. You’re corrupt from the inside out.”

“That has nothing to do with Erik,” he pressed, desperate. “He thinks Josten owns Maryland’s largest canning factory, and that’s it. He doesn’t even know about the Foxhole.”

“You claim he’s your-- _lover_ , and then lie to him?”

“Have you told Katelyn anything?”

For the first time since beginning to storm out, my thoughts slam down into me. I gaped at him, affronted he dare bring her up and incensed he made a valid point.

The smile he gave me was haunted, a twisted-up version of his usual. It struck me as overwhelmingly I didn’t care to linger, my eyes re-focused on my shoes with an anger that wouldn’t go away ever since I’d landed in this sorry excuse for a city.

He continued, possibly sensing his only advantage.

“The boss dropped you off here. You have to stay, Aaron. You don’t-- have to get on with me, or with Erik, or think what we do is fine, but it’s our roof. You’ll treat us with the respect we deserve.” 

My hand tightened on my suitcase’s handle. Recently, everyone thought they could tell me what to do. I was not an unruly child in need of babysitting. My teeth ground together until my jaw ached.

“I’ll think about it,” I growled. I didn’t wait to see his expression - I turned and stormed for the door, snagged my hat off the rack, shoved it on my head, and left.

 

 

Eventually, I returned. I didn’t say a word to Nicky or his tall, German ‘friend,’ but I unpacked my suitcase in the guest bedroom and took breakfast at their table out of time-limited necessity rather than want, my head down as they spoke about the weather and stock market and sports and cars and things so normal, without any perverted glance or touch or kiss, they were just so _typical_ , it made my head spin. Sometimes their eyes lingered a little too long, or they smiled at a weird spot in a story like they were just happy to be together, but never so long that I couldn’t wonder if I was just searching for it. Though I did my best to ignore them, I couldn’t miss the talk about how Erik’s investments soared. He sat on a committee for the steel mills. Nicky was running for governor. Erik supported him like a brother would- rather, like a brother should. 

Diseased. Baltimore was, I now fully understood, diseased.

Perhaps my living situation was another reason I threw myself so into my work and despaired at Boyd’s attempts to socialize me. (Nicky did, too, with a stubbornness that hadn’t left him, but thus far, I’d glared and ignored his invitations to various neighbor’s dinner parties).

Time passed. 

Two weeks in, having seen hide nor hair of my brother and more disgusted with my choices than normal, I drank to… possible excess at the Foxhole. People had discovered Aaron, not Andrew, came to the restaurant every so often, and that explained why Andrew was ‘suddenly’ without Josten so much, but aside from Boyd, who saw me daily, and Wilds, who practically saw me daily, all of them treated me like my brother. 

I drank so much it didn’t matter. 

On the downside, I also drank so much Boyd decided it was best to call Nicky to pick me up. I didn’t protest, spending my time instead - supposedly, these events are a bit fuzzy - grumbling into the table about the difficulties of finding good dance halls and good family. When Boyd shook my arm to wake me up from a nap at the bar and tell me Nicky arrived, I stumbled off my stool without help. Another body shoulder-checked me as I made for the door; I growled inarticulately at the shadow, but continued on, because stopping then would mean stopping for a while. 

Nicky packed me into the passenger side of his car with a few concerned words about if I was _picking up on my old habits_ and if I _wanted to talk about it._

I told him _fuck off, fairy_ , which were the first three words in two weeks that I’d spoken to him. I might’ve slurred, because he laughed rather than cried, and called me sloppy, and told me that if I threw up in his car he’d be pissed as hell.

Reminded of college days gone by, the _better days_ , I pressed my burning forehead against the glass and tsked, and later, accepted his help in reaching my room.


	8. KEVIN DAY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings for this chapter** : graphic violence, drug abuse, Riko Moriyama, racism.
> 
> (there's unfortunately no real way to explain why a traditionalist Japanese family cared about, let alone held sway over, America’s eastern coast. but that's okay!! rather than turn Ichirou Moriyama into Edoardo Morello, let’s just…… ignore the implausibility along with every other implausibility in here.)

[ **FIVE YEARS PRIOR.** ]

My second shot at national finals were barely a month away, and I could _taste_ them. 

The thrill, the heady rush, ten minutes or less in a ring, break, five minutes, break, _two minutes and they’re done, down, depleted,_ and you rise, rise, rise. 

Like firecrackers in your blood, feet light and heart pounding, every match quicker than lightning but twice as electric, like you could take everything in the world and beat it into shape, make it right, make it _fit_. There was you, and there was your opponent, and there was the canvas, and there was no question about what to do. There were forms, there were techniques, there were the right ways and wrong ways to lay a man flat and if you didn’t do it, if you didn’t manage it, it was your fault, your practiced that lacked, your endurance that didn’t hold, your eye that failed. And, God willing, you fixed yourself as much as the world.

No. No. Forget God. It was you, it was all you.

Regionals sang from the heart, but nationals - that brought me to life. 

The crowds, the pressure, the expectation. Money trading hands over your sweat and blood, the occasional challenge to _go the distance, make ‘em think he’s winning, drive ‘em wild_ before _knock ‘im flat, Baby Boy._ I loved it, I _loved it_.

_I don’t want ‘em to be able to recognize their own ma, you got me?_

_I got you._

_Hell, Baby, I don’t want their ma recognizin’_ them. 

My left hook used to put men down like they were rabid dogs. One-two, _bam!_ , down, whistle, up, go again, a proper brawl, and it was good, it was heady, it was that rush that said _you did well_. Always showboated when I was told, always stretched or shortened a bout, didn’t matter, only thing I wouldn’t do was take a dive but that wasn’t my purpose, but what I really liked were those matches that there wasn’t the time to dance around in. I liked a good match, I thrived on pitting physicality against physicality, and they encouraged me to enjoy it. Hell, they funded my career since before I could hold my liquor, pulled me out of the pits, put me on a proper canvas with the best gym and strict coaches. I loved what I did. I lived through what I did.

Papers ate it up. More importantly, a high-rolling buyer ate it up, and summarily bought me.

He put me in the best gym and gave me the strictest coaches. He started me to where I am. I’d be a fool to not be grateful. 

Riko, though - the Raven - he shaped me. He’d never had to work the pits, his family was ritzy, flooded to the gills with green. My ma hadn’t been, which is why I hadn’t been: a single woman with a child, fuck, she’d been lucky to keep a day job, though she was whip-crack smart and would’ve made a fine innovator if they’d given her half a chance. She’d too much pride to do the bowing and simpering that a woman making connections had to do, or so she complained. I’d started running the circuit for her, or so I told myself - it’d made good money, but honestly, even then I’d loved the thrill of it. Then she’d died of influenza, left me with a letter about a father that I could do fuck-all with, and the Butcher had his eye on me, took a risk on me, and Riko’s uncle took pity and set me up something nice for the low, low price of doing what I loved.

Riko loved the blood as much as the skill. My opponents, I could knock them flat but keep it clean. Riko tended to lose his head when he smelled blood. Fourteen and on my own for the first time, fourteen and desperate for a role model, Riko didn’t strike me as peculiar.

The Butcher had us both under his name, kept us thick as thieves and living in each other’s pockets, but what do you do when regionals or nationals sets you up against yourself? It’s not too bad a loss the first time - it’s crazy publicity, the country’s best fighters pitted against one another, our purses huge, the perfect excuse for bringing a politician or law-maker with a guilty pleasure in boxing - but the second, the third? Gods, there’s gotta be a _third?_

_Go the distance, drive ‘em wild!_

When you go down, that’s on your head.

Riko fucked up. He'd turned aggressive, fallen for my feint, taken a liver shot and gone down and didn’t get up fast enough.

_The Raven’s Wings -- Clipped!_

It’d driven him up the wall, made him madder than a cat in a box. People started calling him a gatekeeper, never meant to be champion but respectable in his own right. Just not the best.

So you train. That’s what you do when you’re not the best: you put your head down and work at it. Sometimes talent didn’t pan up, and you fell short, and you made peace with it, because that’s where you were. I never expected Riko to settle, I never thought the championship would last forever in my court. I expected Riko, my training partner of near thirteen years, to come back swinging. We were aging, but we weren’t faded. They couldn’t count us out yet. 

Told him as much, too, in the upheaval that followed my beating him: _you’re King._ I was warming his throne until he took it back, that was all. Sure, my pride got to me, but my pride wasn’t stupidity. It didn’t mean I’d beaten him forever.

Then nationals came again, and the Butcher’s man, Romero, pulled me aside an hour before the semi-finals - it’d been me and a black man from the rural parts - and told me _take a dive, Baby Boy._

I’d been stupid, and blind, and stunned, a twenty-four year old in his prime, a year into my championship and adoring every second of it. I’d been sure I’d misheard him. The Butcher knew I didn’t take dives. 

I knocked the guy flat in record time, and my purse went up substantially. People like a returning champion, especially when the alternative looked a little ‘fresh off the boat.’

(The Raven, meanwhile, flattened the Frenchman, to the public understanding that he’d cement his gatekeeper role by the end of the season.)

(I couldn’t look Jean in the eye during that week. A pissed off Riko took it out on anyone who wasn’t me and came within swinging distance.)

 _Aw, Baby_ , my coach had said when I’d climbed down from the ring, my forehead split, my arms like noodles, but everything else in me shining, shining, ready to go-go-go. _Baby, Baby, why’d you do that?_

By the end, by his nervous look at me and then the top better’s box, I’d stopped smiling.

The Butcher didn’t do anything that I knew of between that bout and the finals, though. Gradually, night by late practicing night, I forgot altogether that there could be a problem. I was champion. I’d started a pit-fighter, a nothing, and now the whole country knew my name. My form was the _best_ , I trained _the best_ , I knew boxing, in and out and upwards and downwards, and I loved it with all my heart. There were downs in between the matches, sure, there was Jean’s spitting spirit dimmed to a candle’s guttering flame, Riko’s mood swings, the way some of our practicing partners disappeared, the subtle threat the same could happen to any of us, and _Riko_ , insults and criticisms and a standard higher than either of us could reach, little jabs and pokes the coaches pretended to not see, the shows the Butcher invited us to, the _profits and costs_ discussions with Tetsuji, no time for anything except boxing, but the thrill out-weighed the rest. 

I mean, hell. We went to get ink done, a _1_ for Riko, because he was Tetsuji’s to-be King, and it was before I had the championship, and it made sense. I took _2_ , Riko jeered Jean into _3_ , and we were stupid eighteen year olds with ink on our collar-bones like a couple of thugs, and Tetsuji nearly beat Jean and me senseless for going along with Riko’s hairbrained idea and threatened to burn the marks to nothing but then the public ate it up (they liked thinking their boxers were closer to dogs than people; it made all the blood tolerable, maybe) and it was fine.

At least until I got the championship that turned my two into an ironic mockery of Riko’s one. 

Moments before we were due out of the locker room, Riko and I wrapped up our hands as normal. 

Then it was, “Round two, huh?” Maybe he sounded bitter. I knew he was in a bad mood. I didn’t pay attention, my mind on the fight, the thrill, a match that would be well fought.

So, “Yeah, looks like.” 

And, his hand on mine, back-back-back, _snap!_ finger broken like a carrot, I’ll never forget the sound, and he had a glove on and it landed too heavy on the back of my head, sent me sprawling, and _crack!_ there went my hand under his shoe, and I’d yelled, I hadn’t understood, and Tetsuji’s men swarmed as Riko left for the ring, his head high but his expression ugly.

 _You have to participate,_ they told me, wrapping my right hand for me and shoving gloves over twisted bone. I’d been hurt before, sprained an ankle or took a shiner but we still had practice, but this was -- startling. This was not done. This was going to mess me up bad if I went in the ring, and I tried to tell them that but, _You going to rat on him, Baby Boy?_

Then the fear out-weighed the thrill. _No_ , I’d said, a twenty-four year old looking like he wanted nothing more than his ma. I hadn’t thought of my ma like that in years. Tetsuji had never tried to act like a father, and the name on my ma’s last letter was still nothing but a fistful of words.

 _Good,_ and they’d shoved me toward the ring, for all intents and purposes looking as if I were simply nervous and not wincing with every jostle.

The crowd had been wild. A rematch! The Raven and the Baby Boy! Best friends turned rivals!

I’d had to stoop low to get my coach’s ear. The papers would say I looked off-balanced and unduly anxious, but seeing any picture of me before that match, I could only stare at how I’d cradled my left hand, the grainy but visible tight edges in my face. “Coach--”

“Stuff it, boy,” he’d cut me off, and that was when I’d realized he wasn’t my coach. Romero looked at me like I was closer to dead than retired, and he couldn’t wait to attend my funeral. “You take the fall, you make it look convincing, or you’ll be on the block, and the Butcher’ll serve you up on ice. Got me?”

_You got me?_

_I got you._

I went into the ring. Riko cornered me within a minute, and threw me out with a split lip and black eye. The crowd was ecstatic but startled. Last season Riko and I had rubber matched, the fight coming down to the wire. Now it seemed as if I’d been dragged fresh out of some illict speakeasy, and couldn’t possibly last another round.

“Should’a taken the dive last round, champ.” The henchman muttered in my ear, his bad breath bringing me down from a painful haze. My left hand felt like it was on fire in a way I’d never felt: Riko, ever one for blood, targeted my left block almost exclusively, and I was sure if not for the glove my wrist would have bent in half. 

Cold water cascaded down my back, and I jumped. He pulled me back with bruising fingers. “The hell’re you doing, sleeping? You looked pathetic out there. Thought I told you to give ‘em a show.”

I didn’t have any words. The bell rang, and I was back in the ring.

Riko didn’t pull his punches - Riko showboated - Riko pawed, grinned, hit where it’d bruise and where it hurt, drew on the fight as a cat might play with a mouse. I kept my feet, but just barely: we ran close to time by virtue of my footwork alone, my defensive and offensive a lopsided wreck. It was my championship title, and it was the worst match I’d ever ran. People were astounded by Riko’s skill, and appalled at mine -- eventually, when they printed, the tabloids said I was so pig-headed and sure of my win that I went on with three sheets to the wind, and people began to say the same. It reached the point the police came to raid my locker at the gym, and then Tetsuji’s home, which just wasn’t done. They came up clean, but the public didn’t care. I was a mess, they said. A wash-up. An embarrassment to boxing everywhere, and a tragic end to an otherwise inspiring legend.

Of course I couldn’t go to a normal doctor, and Tetsuji refused to fund one that would keep mum for me. Jean fixed my hand with a splint, but we didn’t have to be doctors to tell it would take a miracle to heal right. 

I was put on strict bed-rest in my room at Riko and my one-bedroomed condo, a man set in the lobby to make sure I didn’t wander off. Riko never showed. From the window I saw Tetsuji’s sleek black car pull in. And from there--- 

I bolted.

Out the window, down the fire-escape. Over the wall, into the alley, down to the river. Walk, walk, run.

I don’t know what I was thinking. _Survive_? No, that was too formal, too much like I had a plan, like I didn’t stuff pockets with my ma’s letter and a fistful of cash and nothing else. _Go the distance._ Blank, that’s what I was. I knew I had to leave, that I was washed up and doomed if I stayed, and at best the Butcher would do what I did to myself.

Ended up with the useless letter and no cash by the second day, squatting under a bridge on the city’s outskirts. Ma and I had never been well-off, but that was _ages_ ago, and shit, I’d been a kid, I hadn’t paid attention to how she stretched food with salt or watered milk to double its quantity, let alone the ins-and-outs of convincing a landlord to take a chance on a grimy, unemployed body. 

Respectable folk took a look at me and saw an unlucky cripple. Tramps saw an easy target at best, a sap who was used to comfort and money, and left me to wither without sympathy. A few put my face to my name, offered me a free dinner and extra cash, but it took til my stomach tried to crawl out my spine for me to swallow down the pity coating their face and accept.

 _There are plenty of jobs to be found_ , said the wife of one well-meaning fan, maybe trying to be helpful, maybe annoyed her husband knew more about my statistics than their household. _Strapping lad like you, even with a bum hand, there must be something. You could coach._  
  
I kept my eyes down as her husband shushed her, hand tucked under the table. 

Sure, maybe there was a lot to be found. Went to a few bureaus for the unemployed, sat with men and women to talk about my skills, see where I could fit, their jackets ironed and vests buttoned with gleaming bronze, uninterested and lying about it when they realized they needed to sell a job to some soft tramp who couldn’t lift or write with much competency. 

(I wasn’t _illiterate_. I wrote left-handed.)

Thing is, I’d only ever known one.

If I was gonna coach, first, I needed out of Baltimore. Hell, I needed out of the East Coast, just in case Tetsuji came looking. 

My ma’s letter was my companion, though one I could’ve done without. _DAVID WYMACK_ had a comfy gig in Manhatten last I heard, a big-shot lawyer in a high-rise, but _DAVID WYMACK_ couldn’t fix my hand or make Riko explain or look at me with anything besides disappointment, and I was already beat, why would I go out of my way for abuse? Rationality told me to head to Manhatten, to give it a go. See what the lawyer had to make of a smudged and crinkled piece of paper with a woman who used to love him’s name scribbled at the base. See if he could answer _anything._ Why’d he leave? My ma wrote it wasn’t his fault, that she’d left him. 

It was too much.

I could barely think past Riko, the way he’d messed me up and let me fall without hesitation, without even a _told you so_ , with just nothing. Too much nothing, that was what was in my head.

No fucking way would my feet point toward New York.

Two weeks on the road, hitch-hiking where I could and walking when I couldn’t (didn’t dare mess with trains: the one time I had, ignorant to the symbols scratched on the door, a raggedy woman with an over-bite and screw-eye rolled me out the car while I slept and the train still moved) and even those who recognized me didn’t dare invite me to their homes. Back ached, head ached, bandages fraying and browned, scruff growing down my neck, hunger dragged my feet and of course, of course, my hand _burned_. Eventually my insides went bust, too: one morning a cough started in my throat and then consumed the whole of my chest, and then the fire in my hand crawled its way through every nerve and every pore, and somewhere in Atlanta’s humid heat my legs decided they’d had enough and dropped me behind some dinner.

Right arm flat, set to lift myself up, red brick swimming before my eyes. The world tilted and pressed me right back down, a quiet admonishment for trying to get up, and it had a point: the cement felt soft as a feather-stuffed pillow, and blissfully cool besides. 

When a sharp prod cracked open my eyes, the city’s heat had simmered down. A shadow loomed over me, arms crossed over his chest and head cocked. My head pounded. I closed my eyes again, content in the hazy, fever-inspired idea that a shadow couldn’t do much.

However, it wasn’t as happy to let me drift back to the dark. “Aw,” it said, its voice lilting, “I was hoping the bitch was right and you were a dead body. You’d be the first in _ages_. Congratulations, you’re actually just a disappointment.”

Pride had been the thing to keep me from taking charity as well as what kept me from finding a ditch to die in - again, it pulled me from the edge, made my eyes crack open and try to focus on the shadow.

It turned out to be a he, his thin face scrunched up in disgust. He took an exaggerated sniff and faked a gag when he saw me looking. A scratchy, off-kilter laugh cut his hilarious display short.

“Damn me if I haven’t seen skinned possums that look better than you do. What foul-breathed bastard chewed you up and spat you out?”

He crouched even though I didn’t answer, elbows balanced carelessly on his knobby knees. Finally, I got a good look at his face: pupils blown wide, dirt blond hair hung in strips down to his eyes, cheekbones cut high and deep, nose and lips dry and cracked. When he grinned, shining, infected gums bordered black on rotting teeth.

Great. The last person I’d interact with was a dope fiend.

“Was it your daddy? Or, heaven forbid, dearest mother?” This struck him as the pinnacle of humor; his laugh came for a second round and dropped heavy in my ears. “You look too old to be hanging around home, but then, if you’ve disappointed me this much, I can only imagine what your old man must think.”

Thick as cotton and twice as unruly, my tongue refused to cooperate. The words worked some strength into my limbs, though; I managed to push myself up and over, shoulder hitting the wall that I guess had been behind me, that wheezing cough making a reappearance to shake my bones the moment I opened my mouth to tell him off. The addicted scrunched his nose again and hopped back. As if I could infect him. 

_Hope I do_ , came the thought, the vindictiveness startling me. _At least I’ll have accomplished something._

“That’s rude,” he told me. I stared back at him, hazy and confused. “You pass out on my fine, boring establishment’s doorstep, and then don’t even bother answering my questions.”

“Wasn’t my old man,” I finally choked out. “He wouldn’t even know me.” He cocked his head the other way, his smile dimmed. 

He took his time in thinking. I only knew my eyes shut when he prodded my sore foot and I blinked them back open at him.

“I asked that a minute ago.” He finally said with what might’ve been a huff. Then, “Fuck, you stink. You can’t stay here. You’d turn off a starving rat.”

“I’ll be gone soon,” I answered, everything in me exhausted and blank. Being seated vertically seemed to satisfy my pride enough to take away whatever energy had gotten me there. 

“Now,” he persisted. “You’ll be gone _now_.”

There wasn’t a point in answering. I let my head loll backwards until the air had me choking again, lungs trying their best to work their way out of my body.

“Fine,” the addict said, all at once impassive, “rot here.”

Then he was up and gone, disappearing into a doorway I hadn’t even noticed and leaving me to the night.

He came back after what seemed like a blink; actually, I’d swear he did, because between one second and the next there he was, crouched again by my side. Another blink and I was horizontal on something too hot, the vague impressions of heat and ache and pins and needles making my head spin, like the painful numbness that came after from working a bag over without stretching. 

Turned out what I was on was a ratty woolen couch. It smothered me, dragged me down and burned me up, and I fought to get off it. _Big mistake_ because then _shit!_ I succeeded and landed on my left side, and jumped straight from frying pan to oven. 

A blond appeared at my side within moments, hauling my ass off the floor by my armpits and, mercifully, dragging me away from the couch. “That fever fry your brains?” He said, and I looked up to find the dope fiend a little less manic and a little more inconvenienced. “Figured if you didn’t die at Sweetie’s, you wouldn’t die on my couch; didn’t realize I’d have to deal with a vegetable.” I was so busy not falling on my face, I didn’t realize where he might be taking me until my shins bumped metal and he neatly shoved me into a rusted basin.

Lukewarm water rushed up to my chin, my head cracked back against the sides and legs hung over the edge. I spluttered, my terror animalistic, but when I fought to get up he pushed me back and snarled, “ _Stay,_ ” so like and unlike Riko that I did, chest heaving.

“You _reek._ ” He groused, taking a soapy sponge to my right arm, pushing my dirty sleeve up. “I could barely sleep between that wheeze and the smell. You stank up my place for two days without one coherent word. No thank you, no apology. Absolutely ungrateful.”

The bandages on my left struck me as too bright. I realized they were new, and properly done, with a wooden splint that didn’t wiggle as Jean’s had. 

Struck dumb, terror giving way to simple befuddlement, I wondered why he hadn’t drowned me if he wanted to give me a bath so bad. 

(Later, I’d learn he wouldn’t ever get that personal with a conscious body, let alone an unconscious one.)

He had me strip to my skivvies, scrubbed me clean enough that the bath water had to be changed twice, a month or more of grime peeling off me in black, brown, green and, finally, pink chunks. It took ages; enough time that my brain started to clear, the fire under my skin abating to an ache that I was plenty used to. The cough kept up, but he must’ve hydrated me somehow while I was out, because it didn’t feel near as bad.

Then he shoved a bundle of clothes at me and left, returning just as I’d finished dressing - whose clothes they were, I didn’t know, as he ran a hell of a lot shorter than I did (though maybe not much skinnier, anymore). 

“Your ring finger’s green,” were his first words after he eyed me, clean and dressed and back on the couch. My legs were too wobbly to keep me up for long. It’d been a miracle I could get the pants on, really, and probably had more to do with my stubbornness than any reflection of health. I stared at him, owlish. He grinned for the first time since I’d woken up, a giggle bubbling out of him. (Later, I realized he must have left to get hopped up.) “You’re going to want to cut it off. That beard, too - it makes your face look like a shitty squashed square.”

The beard comment didn’t even process. “What?”

He wiggled his fingers in my direction, then flipped his hand and curled one, hiding it from view. “Ring finger. Infected. Lose it, or lose the hand.”

Still, no words came.

His hand dropped, his eyebrows high and cheery tone completely at odds with his words. “Let’s get something straight. I don’t repeat myself. I did before, because you were trying real hard to make friends with Death, but now you’re awake and lucid, and I haven’t time for idiots or children. I could do it for you, but you’re going to tell me some things before we get that friendly.”

A dull roar began in the back of my mind, rumbling higher and higher until it turned into a buzz. In contrast, a cough scratched out of my throat, and I sunk back into the couch. 

Lips stretched back from dark gums and sharp teeth, he dragged over a worn, wooden chair and lounged back, legs thrown out and one foot crossed over the other. 

“For one, what’s the infamous Kevin Day doing in Atlanta?”

My mouth opened, and a shiver ran down my spine. A fan, huh? 

_Don’t be stupid. He’s no a fan._

Maybe I took too long - that happened, sometimes, especially lately, more and more, only a month I guess but the emptiness yawned wide as the Grand Canyon and grew ever worse - maybe I pause for longer than his thin patience allowed, because he started to rub at the inside of his sleeve and the shiver ran my spine again and words at last came.

“It isn’t Baltimore.” Weak to my own ears, I flushed as he quirked one eyebrow. “Didn’t you hear? I’m washed up.”

He let his sleeve rest for a dismissive wave. “People say all sorts of shit. If I wanted to know what they had to say, I’d stick my head in a dumpster and listen.”

I eyed him, weary as much as wary. 

People had asked me the question before, of course. In Aberdeen, before sickness had people averting their eyes, the family’s enthusiastic eleven year old echoed his father in a question exactly like that. But they hadn’t dragged me from-- wherever I was (Sweetie’s?), changed my bandages, gave me new clothes. They didn’t wait me out like I had something important to tell them.

 _It wasn’t important,_ I thought, relishing briefly in the self-deprecation. If I’d been important, I wouldn’t have made it to Aberdeen. 

Finally, everything in me just-- done, tired and blank and I surprised myself with how little I cared about what I had to say: “I wasn’t drunk, that night I lost the championship.” A pause, as I waited for some emotion to surface. None did. I swallowed and continued, his smile gone and eyes damming. “I lost, because.” Well, that was weird. I couldn’t get the words out, so I lifted the evidence in silent testimony. “My sponsor decided to cut me off at the last second.”

“Your sponsor fucked up your wrist?”

“No.” My good fingers tapped on my knee, an odd feeling crawling up my throat, not unlike how blood once clogged it. It was peculiar, and I didn’t know what to do with it. My face screwed up. “My sponsor’s not somebody you say no to. Wasn’t. My sponsor wasn’t.”

He watched me. Waited.

No longer able to meet his eyes, I focused over his shoulder, gave a shrug, cleared my throat of cloying copper. “I said no. He wasn’t happy.” 

“No shit,” he said, and uncrossed his feet. Then, abrupt as anything, “Second. How far did you think you’d get, running like you are?”

Quieter than I expected, I said, “I haven’t got anywhere else to be.”

Another dismissive hand-wave. “That’s not what the cowardly confession your dead mother wrote.” 

My eyes near bugged out my skull. All at once: I wanted to dive for my wet clothes, make sure I hadn’t soaked through that stupid letter, wanted to demand what right he had to read it, didn’t really want to demand anything, didn’t want to move, and the sick amusement came back to his face at however I looked.

“Don’t you worry,” he laughed, chair kicked back on two legs for a second before he stood in one languid motion. “I took it out before your dip in the tub. It’s on the counter.”

“She wasn’t cowardly,” I replied, belated and a little angry about that.

He scoffed, unimpressed, and turned away. “She tells you about your old man only when she knows she’s dying? She’s cowardly.”

“She--”

“Shut up,” he said, the words light and jovial and all wrong. “I really don’t care about your dead mother. The fact you’re not with him means you don’t care much for your father, either.

“So, because I’m generous, I’m going to give you an option: vodka or bourbon?”

It wasn’t the ache in my joints and behind my eyes that kept me from puzzling out what he meant, I was sure of it. My head spun at the conversational hoops, one hand tangling into my pantleg and the other twinging awfully as it tried to do the same.

Finally, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your choice of anesthetic.” He wiggled his fingers at me once more; my face drained of color, my stomach lurched. “If you’ve got any brain left, you’ll keep the hand and lose the finger. It has to be tonight, or I’ll turn you out. I’ve got the knife, you’ve got the infection; it’s plain as Day, really.”

With a snicker, he took for a drawer next to the ice box. I watched his back, and thought I might feel something beyond Riko’s echoing betrayal. 

For a state as strict about its dry laws as Georgia, he somehow produced a fine bottle of imported vodka. The sun sunk low, the sky striped in red and orange; I drank, and he sobered up, swapping to Marlboro as his high faded. Somewhere in Atlanta, probably in a mutt’s belly, is a ring finger cut precisely from the knuckle up. 

It wasn’t until the morning _after_ that I learned his name was Andrew Minyard, and he worked as a busboy at Sweetie’s, which turned out to be an American diner trying its hand at exotic cuisine.

For whatever he saw in me, he let me crash on his couch and chase my illness away with cornmeal and grits and, once I proved I could walk around the block without tripping, alcohol. 

He wasn’t _nice._ At best he was tolerant; in truth, he was closer to a bored kid with a semi-interesting puzzle. It wasn’t until I wandered back to the apartment after a late walk around the neighborhood - I’d finally gotten better enough to realize just how much I’d been hurting - and met, for the first time, a stony silence and open disgust that _he seems lonely_ occurred to me. Recognizing the quality in him sent me into a spiral contrary to a recovering body: I slept longer, moved less, ate less, drank more. I woke up with a pounding headache and stumbled into the kitchen for bread or pasta, only to feel a rush of absolute satisfaction that I’d beaten Riko to a better piece. More than a few times, absolute confusion hit me when I glanced across the room to see a lily-pale blond man and not Riko. I always froze up after those moments, my thoughts scattered and the emptiness - _the loneliness, fucking_ great - crowding in. 

We’d practically lived in each other’s skin, Riko and me. On the run I hadn’t given it much thought, but now -- fourteen days into recovery, doing nothing but staring at the wall all day, it wouldn’t leave me alone. There’d been Jean, yeah, and some others, but-- Jesus Christ, how was Jean? I’d just left him. He had to be okay. _How was Riko?_ Did he regret what he did? He must not have known he’d go that far - he had a temper; it probably got the best of him. He’d always thought he’d be number one, and - maybe - he thought he couldn’t be if he didn’t take me out. He wouldn’t want me around if I couldn’t keep up with him in the ring. But… _But._

One night, salami added to the usual cornmeal and grits, Andrew cut me off with a too-loud, “Riko, Riko, Riko,” jeered, “all you _talk about_ is _graceful, perfect Riko_. You’re as bad as a spurned wife. What, you miss warming his bed that much?”

I’d started, the air punched from my lungs. I hadn’t even realized I’d brought him up, but then, we were talking about the up-coming boxing season. Of course I’d brought him up.

He sneered, as if he could read my thoughts. “That fucker ruined your whole career, your whole _life_ , and you’d still jump if he came calling.”

“You don’t know him,” I said, my old, rougher accent creeping in. I still had to splint my wrist, but by then I could move my (remaining) fingers without trouble, and they squeezed tight around a spoon. “He wasn’t always bad.”

“Well, then, what are you waiting for? Crawl back and see if he’ll let you lick his boots. Sounds like one _romantic_ Friday night.”

As he spoke, his lighter flicked on under his thin black pipe. Mostly he smoked opium, the smell sweet and lasting on his breath, but I’d seen small coke jars in the bathroom drawers. Where he got his stash, I didn’t want or need to know. Baring the night he’d sawed off my finger, I had yet to see him come all the way down from a high. It had to be the reason he lived sparsely - all his money went to keeping up with his habit. 

My feathers ruffled, I set my jaw and glared. Riko was-- Riko was complicated. I wanted to go back to him. I didn’t. I did, I didn’t, I didn’t _know._ I wanted to understand. I wanted his word that he was sorry, though I knew that wouldn’t happen. I wanted Andrew to talk more. I was sick of being left alone, of having so much time with conflicting thoughts, I was so out of practice - I itched, I burned, to get back to the grind. All at once, I just _wanted._

He laughed at me, took a puff, and held it.

“Pathetic,” he breathed out, smoke whistling from his nose. “You blame your sponsor, but he kept you chained like a dog. When you started to think for yourself, he invested in a muzzle.”

I forced out, both for him and me: “I don’t want to go back.” My hand ached.

He eyed me, took another puff, and let the smoke out in clean rings.

“If I thought you really did,” slower, less mocking, “you wouldn’t be on my couch.”

I went silent at that, frustration unfamiliar after so long an absence.

After dinner, as we migrated to our respective corners of his small room (a closet masqueraded as his bedroom, and you could barely turn around in his bathroom), him at the window with his opium and me on the couch with that day’s Sports papers, he tapped against the glass with his pipe and met my curious look with a cheery, horribly false smile.

“I’m leaving,” he stated. “Atlanta doesn’t suit me anymore. I’m going to take a train up to Detroit and find work in the car factories.”

Feeling like I was dropped in a bout blindfolded, I replied, “Alright.”

“Should I buy one ticket, or two?”

I blinked, sure I’d misheard him.

He cocked an eyebrow at me. Before he could make a side comment about not liking to repeat himself, I hedged in, “That’s a lot of money.”

“You’ve been eating my food and sleeping on my couch for two weeks, and it’s a train ticket that makes you think about how much you cost?”

Embarrassment warmed my ears. Shoulders squared, throat cleared, I said, “I could pay you back if I came with.”

His eyes caught the light from my flickering reading candle. 

_What about Riko?_ stilled my tongue, and I froze. _That’s farther away. That’s--_

_Good, isn’t it? Farther away’s good._

_\-- he could find me if he wanted. Tetsuji had the funds. That he hasn’t…_

_He could be waiting for me._

Fear and anticipation, pain and a bit of hope. Then:

_The Butcher could find me._

And:

_Riko didn’t visit when you were on bed rest._

And:

 _What about Jean?_ and, _What about Thea?_ and, “Two. Buy two.”

Andrew nodded and turned back to the window, as if it were as simple as that. But whatever messed with my head took up a new, frantic pace, and I couldn’t let it end there.

“Andrew--” his head tilted just enough to show he was listening, “-- Riko’s not going to let me go.”

“Is that right? Funny. I don’t see him right now.”

A swallow, the thoughts barely formed. “You don’t get it. He’s not going to let me _go._ ”

An irritated flick of his hand, in a gesture I was beginning to learn meant he thought I was being obtuse on purpose. “Riko, Riko. He better shit gold, the way you jabber about him. Unfortunately, I think I’d be disappointed.”

I stood, paper forgotten, a restlessness in my veins. I was out of practice. I needed to practice. I needed Andrew to understand, but there was no way he could. The best I could come up with - I was never good with words - were a strangled, “He won’t let me _live_.”

I saw it before I understood it: Andrew, tense and frozen, the very opposite of his typical, strung out sprawl. By the time I caught it, he’d melted back into a casual slouch, though his eyes locked on me with a sharpness I’d never before seen.

“Kevin,” devoid of amusement and fake happiness and cheer, he rooted me on spot. “As long as you’re with me, he’s not going to be able to touch you. He won’t be able to so much as _breath_ near you. I’ll make sure of it.”

He didn’t _get it._ I shook my head, denial ready - he cut me off with a low, dangerous tone, everything about him honed to a knife-point.

“I promise you, he won’t.”

Everything in me screamed distrust. I barely knew this man; he’d taken care of me thus far with no complaint, but how long could that last? Maybe he’d listened to my off-hand comments about Riko, but he didn’t know the extent of Tetsuji’s training program. I know I hadn’t told him anything about the Butcher. Terror raced through my blood, a fear so deep I imagined tearing my heart out wouldn’t stop it.

And yet: Andrew watched me seriously, as if I was and could be _something_ , and I couldn’t go back but I couldn’t go forward, and even if Andrew found out the hard way, it was only his fault for making promises about things he didn’t understand.

I sat, hard, on the couch, my head in my hands. The night dragged on. Neither of us moved.

Finally, I accepted, words mumbled to the floor.

He nodded again, _that settles that,_ and turned back to the window.

We left for Detroit by the week’s end, a meager three bags between the two of us. We found work for Ford, like he proposed; I learned to solder, my hand at last bending well enough (though I soaked it in warm water every night), and he worked the assembly line. We worked together, we ate together, we found a flat together, we walked to and from the factory together. We didn’t go out much. He found a dealer for his dope. I found how to work local speakeasies, and drank as much as I could. He joined me for that, too.

A month passed. Nothing happened. Two months passed.

One day he said, “Detroit doesn’t suit me anymore,” and just like that, we left for Chicago. One month there, “Chicago’s too grey,” and then south to Tallahassee. Two weeks, Philadelphia. A few more, and Connecticut. I kept us out of New York - it was fair, it was fine, he refused South Carolina. Eventually we went West, a year gone by and summer biting at its bit to shove spring out of its way. Andrew quipped we made for poor pioneers with our impure addictions and sour attitudes; I snorted, sure we weren’t Manifesting any Destiny, and kept one eye over my shoulder. 

Seattle felt like it had the potential for two months, maybe three. The rain came in a wide variety, and our newest flat even had a small balcony with a rickety, rusted iron railing. Andrew immediately took to laying for hours out there, pipe in hand and arm behind his head. I told him to take off his long-sleeved shirt for once, to try to use the opportunity for a tan. He flicked his hand at me, not even opening his eyes. 

Decent boxers went through Seattle - the gym wasn’t anything like Tetsuji’s, but I’d taken up practice again somewhere in Illinois, and by Washington, my right hook wasn’t a complete embarrassment (my left was still a different story). With gloves I’d saved for seven months to buy a non-offensive pair - Andrew still got on my case for - he wasn’t a fan of my practicing, but he didn’t expressly tell me to stop - and cloth packed where my ring finger had been, no one even knew I used to be a southpaw. Riko and Jean would’ve spotted my short-comings in a second, but I swore I’d work myself out of them. How good you were was on your head, and your head alone.

Andrew usually watched from the bench with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. Other boxers gave us a wide breadth because of him, a solemn, silent presence prone to blank stares. I couldn’t say I minded. I tried to get him to learn, or at least help me with blocks, but he rarely agreed to the latter and never gave in to the former. Not for lack of muscle, either - he went through his own weight routine, and he could press more than I ever had.

Baltimore or the Raven didn’t leave my mind, but I started to live. I started working the circuit in the cities we lived in, though my pride - worn but there, ever there - chafed at being slotted among amateurs like a common journeyman. I was recognized still, my tattoo marking me most, but my fall from grace had been a long and thorough one. _Baby Boy_ didn’t mean much.

That chafed, too, in a different, personal way.

I don’t know if Andrew would keep his promise, but I began to appreciate his company, and then his steadiness. Though he could get manic, sometimes shoving himself in a corner and laughing, laughing, _laughing_ until his voice croaked, he never lashed out at me, and rarely left my side. As you do, we ended up in a few scuffles with locals; I put effort in stemming them more than I once did, though, as Andrew tended to react with a brutality that was at first baffling and then worrying. We couldn’t afford jail-time. I expanded our diet past the basics ( _no, dope doesn’t count for breakfast_ ), made sure he slept, and kept him at least partially engaged in the world. We took care of each other. It worked, mostly.

The flat with its little rusted balcony lasted half the summer. We hitched a ride with a pig farmer along California’s coast, our belongings standing at two suitcases and two backpacks. We sat shoulder-to-shoulder, Andrew sober and silent as always for our moves, my gaze stuck unseeing on the gleaming horizon line. The truck bounced along, empty from delivered hogs, our legs dangling from the back, coated in dust from the knee down. 

A burst of orange through a green alcove brought me back to the present. I squinted, then nudged Andrew with my elbow.

(Good thing he wasn’t napping - I’d found out the hard way not to shake him awake, but at least I only had to learn once).

“You see that?” I murmured. He squinted, uninterested but willing to humor me. “Must be a pretty big fire.”

He didn’t respond- a sober Andrew rarely did-, but by the slightest tilt to his head, I knew it had his attention. 

The farmer up front must have seen it too, because he hollered back, “Weird time for a bonfire, ain’t it? Why, it’s high noon!”

“Yessir,” I returned, because it’d been long established I’d be our duo’s mouthpiece. Damn good thing, too, or we wouldn’t get anywhere without bloodshed. “We headed in that direction?”

“Afraid so, boys. Don’t breath too deep, now.”

The truck ambled its way closer. As the farmer predicted, the wind bathed us in thick, black smoke; we pulled up our jackets to block it out, eyes watering. At least it didn’t last long - it was a directed stream, clearly stemming from one key source. I tried to peer through the grove to see what or who was at it, but I couldn’t make anything solid out through the smoke and trees, and I wasn’t anywhere close to curious enough to give up our ride.

Just as we were about to leave its radius, three men appeared. Two tall, one short; two dressed plainly, tie and jackets and khakis, one looking more than a little roughed up in worker’s jeans and a rumpled collared shirt. The short one had soot across his face, and he held his arms awkwardly at his sides. Too stiff, I thought. It didn’t sit well with me. He raised his hand to hail down the farmer, and his smile looked beyond strained. Unease grew in my gut.

The farmer, kind as he was, with an empty bed big enough for a dozen hogs and room in his wallet for a hitch-hiker’s tip, began to slow. Wiping the remnant of tears from my eyes, the figures sharpened and everything in me _stopped._

The one on the shortie’s right. Darker skin, darker eyes, dark hair. I’d have to stoop to talk to him.

My hand snapped to Andrew’s wrist; usually that would get me a glare and drawled insult, especially with him being sober, but by now we knew each other. His eyes immediately followed mine. 

“Romero.” I whispered, my lips barely moving. “Riko’s man.”

The Butcher’s, really, but I had yet to explain that.

 _Why?_ was my first thought. _Time to see about that promise_ , my second, old hysteria quick to rise in my throat.

The change in Andrew happened in increments: he tilted his head forward, his hat’s brim shading his eyes. I let go of his wrist and pretended I hadn’t felt the blade underneath. He shifted in place, and that knife was in his hand, hidden from Romero’s view by his leg. 

“Why, hello there!” Piped the farmer as he leaned far out his window. Romero smiled, all teeth. The short one’s hand dropped back to his side. “Looking for a ride?”

“Matter of fact, yeah, we are. You heading toward Sacramento?”

“Sure am. You can clamber in back, if you like. Got two other passengers, but they’re quiet boys, and there’s plenty of room.”

The other tall fellow glanced askance at us. His eyebrow twitched, and he frowned, and even through the distance I knew he was working out where he’d seen me before. Soon enough he said something to Romeo, jerking his head in my direction. Romero’s head practically snapped, he moved to stare at me so quickly.

Unsure of what caused this abrupt hesitance, the farmer leaned back into his car with a, “Uuh, you fellas know each other?”

“Huh.” Romero said, loud enough for our ears to catch. “Matter of fact. Yeah. We do.”

“It’s nothing personal, old man,” said the other, and then Andrew shoved me hard off the truck bed and a gunshot split my ears and I scrambled to get myself on the other side of the vehicle. 

I’d thought they’d round the car and do the same to us, but the unmistakable sound of someone’s nose being broken and a curse of ‘ _little bastard_ ’ came around, and the three dissolved into a scuffle that miraculously didn’t involve another bullet. I reached to snag Andrew’s sleeve and drag us into the trees before they finished, but my hand closed around empty air --- and that’s when I noticed Andrew rounding the truck’s corner of his own volition.

 _No!_ I thought, as if thinking loud enough would make him hear. _No, no, fuck, no! I didn’t explain them! You don’t get it! Get back here, Andrew - get back here,_ please!

Of course he didn’t hear, and of course I didn’t say anything. My knees shook; the Butcher’s demonstrations, ever lurking as shadows in my mind, flashed one by one by my mind’s eye. I couldn’t follow Andrew to their arms, but I couldn’t run and leave him. I was effectively useless. Powerless. _Again._

The scuffle elevated into shouting. One body hit the ground after the crack of something metal against, most likely, a skull - peeking under the truck, I saw it was the auburn-haired guy who’d taken the hit, the skin above his temple bleeding and his lip split. Romero, maybe, had his knee in the small of the man’s spine, the muzzle of his pistol shoved into auburn curls. In that second, I realized the shorter guy was a lot worse off than he’d seemed: his chest heaved with a rattle, and his arms where the sleeves rolled up were covered in newly purpling bruises and bubbling burns. His hands, laid placatingly by his head, screamed a raw red, a look I recognized from fighting too closely with searing hot metal. 

Romero demanded he _keep still, he doesn’t need you in one piece_ , and then threw his voice upwards. “Oi, Baby, Baby!” The other was undoubtedly coming for me, his steps slow around the truck’s backside, opposite Andrew. “C’mon, Baby. We just wanna chat. It’s been so long! You were looking g--”

One of the Butcher’s best, he wasn’t stupid. From under the truck, a cloud of dust came up. He moved his gun up and fired. I nearly screamed.

 _Leave him be!_ The words pressed against an invisible cap, everything in me a conflict. I wasn’t even sure who I meant to yell at. _Leave him be, dear God, leave him and me be!_

But Andrew wasn’t sporting new holes, and I watched as he moved lightning-quick from the front to the side. The guy under Romero’s knee came to life at the exact same time, his whole body thrown back in a vicious buck. 

Romero stumbled and fired again. Somehow, the shot missed. He dropped the gun and reached for what had to be a knife.

His hostage rolled under the truck. A second later, body impacted in body and Romero stumbled and fell; I saw the guy give Romero’s leg a sharp kick as he did, and noted how far the whites of blue-ringed eyes stretched. But then I saw Andrew plunge a blade clean through Romero’s throat, red coating his hands and knife instantly. I saw Romero’s knife fall into the dirt, and how it had blood on it from clipping Andrew’s side. 

I was so busy watching Andrew not die, I didn’t know the other one had reached me until he dragged me up by a fistful of hair and a curved blade at _my_ throat.

He dragged me back from the truck, holding me flush against him. We nearly matched in height, so it worked nicely for him -- my feet were all at once clumsy, tripping and dragging, the blade pressing a line of fire over my adam’s apple.

“Come out!” He yelled, his bluster masking the way I could feel his body shaking. Romero was one of the best. But, then, they’d never faced Andrew. “Fuck’s sake, you bastards, come out from the truck or I’ll slit his throat!”

I couldn’t think. I didn’t want to die, but I didn’t want Andrew dying, either, and the only way for this to end seemed to be one or both of us going six feet under. Suppose it’d better be me - I had a ma down there, and owed Andrew one, anyway. I owed Andrew a lot. I owed Andrew five times over for this whole year of borrowed time. 

Seconds ticked by, and the man behind me grew more anxious.

“Five!” He started, his knife wobbling. “Four! … Three! … Two!”

I owed Andrew big, but I really didn’t want to die. My hands gripped his arm like iron clamps, all those days in the gym and brawling in the ring and bare-knuckling in alleys coming back and falling apart at the precarious metal hovering over thin skin and vital arteries. It wasn’t as bad as after Riko, but it was-- it was close. Determined though he was, Andrew probably couldn't patch up a decapitated head.

The knife bit into my neck, readied for _one_ , but then Andrew rounded the truck’s edge, his bloody hands up. 

The man huffed in my ear, hand jerking my head further back.

“Yeah. Good. Figured you’d care. Nice and easy, now. No sudden moves. -- Stop!” 

And Andrew did, his expression flat and still as an undisturbed pond. It was too quiet, I thought, but of course, the thug didn’t know that. His eyes must have jittered away from Andrew for a moment, because then his met mine, a quick, silent assessment on if I was still all there. I couldn’t nod, but I must’ve satisfied some requirement - being alive, probably; that’d satisfy me right about now - because he refocused on the thug in a flash.

“Nathaniel!” The guy was calling. “You want these two dead? First your bitch of a mother, now three strangers? I’ll drag you back to him whether or not you spare these men, it just depends on how much blood-- _hey!_ I told you to stand fucking still!”

With slow, measured steps, Andrew had moved away from the truck. The thug moved me accordingly, shifting degree by slow degree to the side.

Another shot rang out, a sliver of silver from under the truck. Something wet splattered against the side of my head, and the man tumbled back like a sack of potatoes. 

I stumbled at the abrupt loss of support; Andrew met me before I even knew I was in danger of falling, one hand on my chest and the other, gentle, on my neck. I hissed when his fingers brushed the cut, but it wasn’t anything other than irritating. The thought struck me, and I asked, “Your side?” rather than touch, because hell if Andrew was in the mood for me to paw at his shirt. Almost a year, and he still stiffened up if I brushed him at the wrong time. 

Absurdly, that’s what my thoughts lingered on. When he told me, “Just a scratch,” I nodded, dumb as rocks, and raised a hand to check what was so wet on my head. He snagged my wrist before I managed it, then brushed it off himself.

My eyes caught on the pink glob as it hit the ground.

_Oh, right._

_A man had been shot in the face._

_That’s part of his brain._

“We need that truck,” he said over his shoulder while I was busy trying to piece my own brain back together. I almost asked who he was talking to, but then I remembered: Nathaniel. “We’re going to Sacramento.”

“Get your luggage and find another ride,” the short guy - Nathaniel - snapped, the driver door squeaking open. Andrew turned and started for the front as, through the window, I saw a curly-haired head bob and then a body (the third body) drop. 

_Right. The farmer._

I tailed Andrew because that was what my feet knew how to do. He didn’t make a counter-retort, but he didn’t go toward the bed; he beelined straight for the passenger’s door. 

“This one’s perfectly fine.”

The soot-stained guy’s face appeared in the open window with a mean scowl. 

“Listen,” he tried, clambering into the driver’s seat. “I appreciate your help. But I’m not going to Sacramento.”

Andrew didn’t miss a beat. “Then neither are we.” 

_We aren’t?_ We had maybe twelve hours before Andrew’s withdrawal symptoms kicked in - with eerie perfection, he timed his last hit to fade from the moment we hit the road and his nausea to hold off until the second we stepped into whatever became our temporary home - and Sacramento sat within ten hour’s distance. I’d had the unpleasant experience of coaxing a nauseous, vicious-minded Andrew suffering desperate cravings through streets at late hours before; neither of us enjoyed the experience. This seemed like asking for trouble.

Nathaniel paused, his fingers on the engine key. He stared at Andrew - Andrew stared back.

I’d played that game with Andrew once or twice, usually over boxing. He always won.

After what seemed like forever, and I swear I could already smell the dead bodies rotting, Nathaniel’s eyes moved past Andrew and to me. Something happened in his face, but I couldn’t catch it before he shrugged, looked away, and curtly gave in with, “I’m going to nowhere. I’ll let you off at a crossroads.”

Evidently finding this acceptable, Andrew swung open the passenger’s door. The wide bench sported a big, dark stain where the farmer had fallen, a few pink globs and glistening white shards scattered here and there. 

Nathaniel’s face shuttered into such blankness that it made my spine crawl. Up _close_ , he struck me as near a break-down, all thinned nerves, jittery eyes and over-extended adrenaline. I thought about what the thug said about his mother, and the raw skin on his palms. Hopefully when he snapped, he wouldn’t kill us, too.

Andrew didn’t care one lick. He used his jacket to wipe off the worst of the pieces, then laid it down for him and me to sit on. And he did make me follow -- I tried to hang back, pleading without words to just clamber in the back (anyone the Butcher wanted dead was not someone I wanted to chat with-- it was shit luck I had no choice in learning his name), but Andrew stared me down until I lost my nerve and settled in, one side pressed tight to the door and the other against him. 

The truck started under Nathaniel’s hand the same as it had under the farmer’s. It rumbled, coughed, and ambled onward, steady and unconcerned. 

In silence, we headed south, then curved east toward the Rockies.

We passed a few acceptable crossroads for him to drop us off at, but every time he glanced over and Andrew didn’t even look back, we kept driving through. Not too long after taking off, I noticed his head drooped and jerked, his eyes constantly alternating between near-shut and blown wide. Still, we were silent. I shot Andrew a look. Andrew wouldn’t meet my gaze, neither.

Then he nodded off and the truck would’ve veered into a tree if Andrew hadn’t snagged the wheel, and that was the start of it all, of us three getting on, I guess, if I had to pick a starting point. Not the killing, not him letting us on: it was Andrew taking the wheel and Nathaniel unconscious, and me finding my voice for the noble deed of cursing them both. 


	9. NATHANIEL WESNINSKI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings for this chapter:** graphic violence, graphic torture, drug abuse, uuhhhhh. worst of the violence starts at “pretty little mouth” and ends by “he’ll be fine.”
> 
> (more backstory! hells yeah.)

Four years, one month and twelve days ago, Nathan Wesninski’s house burned to a crisp. Three months later, a gumshoe with a chip on his shoulder told a reporter, _he’s fried in the head, negotiating with him’s like dealing in fire, he’d set the bay ablaze if he thought he could get away with it, and honestly, ma’am, it ain’t long before he could_.

Then he said, _have you seen the guy’s face? He looks like an overdone egg._

The gumshoe was convinced it was the first time I made a real move, that I came in with a flamethrower and knocked off Baltimore’s best and everyone tipped their hat and said _oh, yes, of course, that’s our new man, the one that looks like an overdone egg_. His fixation with fire meant _fried like a crisp_ was how people pictured the Butcher met his end meant they whispered _he’ll crisp ya_ in the alleyways meant _he’s Crispy_ , and it struck me as strange, how the Butcher went from crispy to me being _Crispy_ , like inheritance, like legacy, like even in Death my father wouldn’t leave me alone.

Four years, eleven months and five days ago, I woke up under the stars with my throat raw, my head beating out a work song, and my palms feeling like I held fire itself.

(Maybe the gumshoe wasn’t so far off with his fixation).

Intellect told me to take stock and do something about the pain. Reflex goaded me to check for my mother. Instincts, my over-used and over-taxed best friend, kept me still, and that was how I knew I wasn’t alone before I gave up my very last advantage.

“... heading east.”

“Since _when?_ ”

Something smelled sweet. Something smelled sweet and smoky. Ever burning, my palms throbbed.

The voices argued on, oblivious. One hissed as if afraid to wake me up - the other couldn’t care less. Both sounded like they’d been arguing for a while; my stomach dropped when I thought about how long I might’ve been out.

In fact, the latter was so cheery, sweetness dripped like sludge from his words. “We don’t have to. Throw out those gloves, and we’ll settle down right here, right now. He can have the truck. It smells like hog-shit, anyway.”

Exasperated-- this was _definitely_ an old argument--, “Those gloves cost me months’ worth of pay. _I’m not throwing them out._ ”

“Oh? Too bad. Sounds like we’re headed east.”

“What do you have against boxing?”

“It makes me feel neglected, _darling_. You’re an addict.”

“ _You’re_ an addict.”

Over the crickets and through the still, dry air, a laugh. It wasn’t pleased. It wasn’t happy. I breathed in sweet smoke and thought about gasoline and trapped bodies and Kevin Day and how the voices couldn’t be too far but they weren’t close enough to see as I moved my hand, slow inch by slow inch, to the holster under my jacket. Numb fingertips brushed leather instead of metal, a shiver went up my spine, the laughter cut off and I rolled to my knees-- and found myself eating dirt for the third time in not as many days, only this time under an unfamiliar weight and on old, decrepit wood. The truck. The old farmer. Romero, Jackson, the beach, the chase, _promise me you’ll finish this,_ their auto into ours, yelling and scrambling and failing and her locked in the trunk and them dragging me out, _don’t need the bitch when we’ve got the whelp._

“Hey.” Smoke, opium-rich and heady, filled my nose. I gasped, winded, a knee on my back and cold metal at the soft spot behind my ear. “Looking for this?”

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

“Andrew--”

Absurdly, Kevin Day came to my defense. _Kevin Day._ Laughter bubbled up; with effort, the hysteria backed down. 

On my back, the devil didn’t budge. “I’m doing business, Kevin. Kindly be quiet.” A hum, the knife-tip pressed closer but not tilted, not cutting, and: “What’s with the burns?”

That wasn’t what I expected. My throat worked around nothing; when I finally found something to say, the blade nicked into my jaw. “You saw who was with me.” It wasn’t the knife at my throat that strangled my voice. I didn’t think it was emotion so much as too much smoke and not enough water, but then, aside from the laughter, it felt like every drop of feeling had been wrung from me. Too much. Everything in America had been _too much._

“We did.” Andrew sing-songed. A bit back, Kevin Day shifted his weight, the truck bed creaking. “We saw you put a bullet through one without much issue, too. I put a blade through the other, so that’s not where my qualm lies. Here, I’ll put it simply: _why_ were the Baltimore Butcher’s men chasing you all the way in California?”

Kevin Day made an aborted noise, a start-stop of protest or mitigation, and I wondered if he stopped to think for even a second about who he told the Butcher’s story to. I’d thought he’d be smarter than blabbing. I knew he was, or he wouldn’t have lived on the lam so long. News wouldn’t have started of the Baby Boy training again. He wouldn’t be standing, arguing with some crazed dope head, he wouldn’t be re-thinking his words, he wouldn’t be _surviving._

When we’d caught a small-town paper headline of Kevin Day making a new name for himself along the Western coast, and he had to be out from the Butcher and the Moriyamas’ control, he had to be free, _fuck_ , had I envied him. I’d swallowed my tongue lest my mother catch on to my distraction. I’d have left everything behind to have his chance, I’d have sold everything I owned to see one of his matches. My mother would have known that - my mother would break my fingers herself rather than let me near a gym, let alone the ring.

The knife tapping against my throat brought me back. It made me think of Romero, and how he’d absently informed me Lola waited for us near Sacramento. Crashing waves and choking screams so loud in my ears, I’d barely heard him.

“Answer quickly, Nathaniel. I get bored easily, and who knows what’ll happen if I slip up.”

Finally, the laugh stuttered out.

It wasn’t a pleasant sound. It wasn’t amused. A bit of me scrambled to craft up the right cover, to shape an excellent lie, but the rest of me, bathed in salty air and over forty hours of dodging my father only to have him catch us _anyway_ , laughed until I choked and then choked until I wheezed and I was weak, awfully weak, a useless body unable to move except to gasp for air, and only then did Andrew, whoever the hell he was, back off. In the dark, I remembered a truck and a dead old man, and a dead Romero, and the one with the knife moving so there could be a dead Jackson, too, the two of us coordinating without even looking at one another. It spoke of an unflattering instinct in the both of us, or, more positively, a certain steadiness that mothers and killers alone had: to see life, and choose to nurture or destroy it.

“Let it go on record I didn’t break this one,” that mild, dismissive voice said, aimed away from me, “he came this way.”

“Whatever you say, Andrew.” Kevin Day sighed back, unmoved.

“This is where you’ve been?” I rasped out, turning over to look at them. My mind clambered to shut my mouth, because if they hadn’t recognized me that was perfect, that was great, I could be a man running from a debt, I could be a fool thinking I could get away, I could be anything. Andrew sat not a foot away, the knife that used to belong under my jacket twirling in his hands. Romero had taken that from me - I’d taken it back before getting in the truck. Now this no name had it. I looked past him, over to Kevin Day, _the one who got away._ I could be anything, but here he was, back to the truck bed’s sides, arms looped around drawn up knees, and all I wanted was the ability not to recognize my own face. I had nothing left to lose. I wanted to know so much, and felt the future stretch no further than this night. “Running around the countryside with a doped up junkie?” 

I watched as everything in him tensed, his shoulders bunching up an inch.

At last he snapped, “What do you know?” and then he blinked, and -- I don’t know, put the squishy bit between his ears to use, and squinted, and straightened up. Andrew, unconcerned as a feline stretched out in the sun, glanced between us.

Emptied, alive and darkly amused, I smiled.

My mother always said I had my father’s smile. Foggy memories of twenty years past, the last time I’d been in the same room as him, agreed. 

I’d been--- thirteen. When we ran. Kevin Day had been fourteen and brand new, a dirty back-alley fighter with too much potential and no one who’d miss him, Riko’s assigned friend and bosom buddy. A solemn kid, he’d stuck to Riko like glue, and Riko ate it up. I’d met them once, but you would’ve had to be blind to miss it. I remember my father’s demonstration, too, skinning a man alive one piece at a time, a macabre sculptor crafting his next masterpiece. As time went on, maybe out of self-preservation, I remembered the match that came before it more: I’d been a scrappy thing back then, all speed and agility, and they’d put me up against Kevin Day like I’d ever stood a chance. I _didn’t,_ , I’d barely been taught any techniques, but it’d been fun, loads better than baseball or football. I’d had a knack for it - a natural, with instincts like a pitbull - my father had said so, rare praise from a cruel man that seared itself in my very bones. The next day I was supposed to do a full set of bouts, but then - maybe the demonstration had been the wake up call - she loaded a briefcase with thousands of dollars, hooked up her husband’s best stud horses to a non-descript buggy, and raced us out of Baltimore. Those horses fetched a pretty penny in Georgia, and then it was just her and me and the briefcase, and stayed so for a long while

Now I was twenty-nine and, by all accounts, too old to cling to my mother’s coattails.

Didn’t mean I didn’t mess up my hands something bad when Romero let me try to salvage her. 

“Nathaniel Wesninski,” Kevin Day breathed. “You’re supposed to be dead. Sixteen years, you’re supposed to have been dead.”

“You’d be amazed how easy it is to sell a lie.” I croaked out. Might’ve had the smile down, but damn, I needed some water. “I think he even got it in writing.”

“Wesninski? Nathan Wesninski. Naayy-than Wes-nin-ski.” That was Andrew, the knife pointed briefly at me before redirecting to Kevin Day. “Oh. _Ooh._ Your sponsor.”

Shell-shocked and unable to get his eyes off me, he nodded for Andrew. Reflexive. Attuned. 

Who was this guy?

“The Boss.” Andrew chirped.

“The Butcher.” I corrected.

“I hear he sells cat guts and pretends it’s beef.” 

“Are you calling him a fraud?” Kevin, baffled.

“He sold you.” Andrew shot back, his smile a manic curl across his face, his eyes fever-bright. Maybe he was hopped up on something more than opium - anyone who knew of my father and mocked him had to be. “And now you’re back on his radar, Baby Boy. What are you going to do about it?”

His mouth snapped shut. He looked scared, pure fear, no anger, no fight, and nothing like Kevin Day.

Stumbling, he started to protest. “There weren’t any witnesses--”

“You’ve been all over local news. People are picking up on your face again. If Wesninski’s so determined to get his hands on this moron that he’s willing to run across the country, it wouldn’t be hard for him to detour to you for a few questions.”

“-- Hardly, I’m not even --”

“Join us in the real world for a moment and realize your delusional, superhuman standards aside, _you’re already note-worthy._ A phoenix reborn, the last town said. Isn’t that cute?”

He looked at me when he said that, stained teeth bared like a threat.

Kevin blanched.

“That’s why…?”

“Leave the gloves,” head swinging back to Kevin, ever-cheery, ever persistently untouched, “and we’ll let this idiot be on his way.”

Silence.

The two held a conversation without a single word. Or, maybe, Kevin tried his best to have a conversation, and Andrew’s attention wandered away through half of it, down to the moonlight catching on the edge of my knife to his fingers wrapped at the hilt to me to the stars above. He was definitely on something stronger than opium. As Kevin stewed in apparent distress, I swallowed around pain and began to push myself up. In a blink, Andrew had the blade an inch from my nose. A few moves to disarm him popped into my head, but it was a toss up on if I’d be fast enough in my current state. 

I kept myself on my elbows, strain sending a tremble up my arms. Some crazy addict wasn’t going to bow my head.

“You don’t know where I’m going.”

Whatever smile curved up his mouth, it didn’t reach within a mile of his eyes. In the night, the dark shadowed his face, cut his cheekbones and sockets into a skinless caricature. 

“I think I do.”

I licked cracked lips, tasted ash.

“ _Nowhere_ , you said. But there’s fire in your eyes.” With a lilting voice, as if telling me a story. “You’re headed east. You might have friends there, but I doubt it. You look ready to crash and burn, and you want to take however many you can down with you.”

“If that’s what you think,” I returned, stubbornly holding my spot, “then why do you want to be anywhere near me?”

Kevin made a noise like, _good question. ___

__The knife tip tapped me on the nose. Then Andrew sat back, his legs a sprawl before him._ _

__“Because.” He hummed, head tilted back. “You’ll burn so bright, they won’t even see us coming.” His eyes turned over in their sockets to settle hazily on Kevin. The boxer’s rough hands tightened on his elbows- he was missing a finger, I suddenly noticed, a gap that shouldn’t have been-, but fear no longer rolled from him in waves. There was something about the junkie’s confidence that inspired him, put some backbone into him, made him look like he could do anything, and it didn’t make any sense._ _

__“You want to keep playing like the addict you are?” Like it was a promise. Like that was all it took to defy Nathan Wesninski. “I’ll make sure you do.”_ _

__

__

__My mother and me, we’d ran for a while, shore to shore and country to country. Then there’d been a war, the Great War, and France wanted me to march and we couldn’t exactly say _sorry, these papers are fake, I’m not actually a citizen_ , even if all my mother ever said was _you can’t have him, he’s mine_. We could’ve disappeared again, as always, as forever and always, but everyone was trying to disappear and my uncle came to collect, reminded his sister what it was like to breath easy, put a ball and chain on her foot called comfort and she didn’t mind and I didn’t know how to leave her, and isn’t that something. He later told us _the Butcher’s old news_ and _we need Lola out of Baltimore_ and my mother knew what he meant but he said _you’ll be fine, our people will get you out_ and _I love you, Mary_ and maybe comfort didn’t suit her as well as I’d thought because we went._ _

__Life before Hatford’s manor had been a terse, paranoid affair. Twelve years on the run, twelve years of my mother being my rock, guide and keeper, and I didn’t dwell on it much four years after but all those lessons she’d drilled into me came back as the sun rose, pink spreading slow fingers over Nevada’s dusty plains, and the farmer’s truck rolled to meet it. The truck needed to go: too slow, too big, too _noticable_ , too distinctive. They’d built an air-strip in Las Vegas; a plane would reach the eastern coast in record time. Maybe I’d beat Lola._ _

__“No.” Andrew deadpanned, a pipe hanging precariously from his mouth and the window rolled down for him to stick his arm out. “No planes.”_ _

__Too lucrative. Too easy to track who flew and not enough stop-stations to disappear on touch-down._ _

__No planes, then._ _

__A train. Not the passenger cars, but one hauling cattle or some other livestock. Mother and I had hitched rides in those before, though not often - they left you smelling a little too obviously ripe, and some inns wouldn’t let you rent if you arrived looking like too much of a hobo._ _

__“No way.” Kevin, while he rubbed his arm as if remembering some pain. “If we’re taking the train, it’ll be with a ticket.”_ _

__Harding had pushed hard for national roadways as the automobile industry boomed, but the Rockies remained largely untamed. A smaller car would be perfect-- one of Ford’s Model Ts, black and a little rickety and very indistinct, if only the threat of rain and mudslides blocking up the road wasn’t so real. Once in the mountains’ heart, we’d have to find horses to make any real, decent time._ _

__Andrew laughed. “Didn’t realize you were such a dandy. _Horse riding._ That’s hilarious. Do I look like I know how to ride a horse?” _ _

__Kevin’s mouth thinned, his eyes trained forward. “They’re massive beasts.”_ _

__I resisted the urge to bang my head against the dashboard until I could be out cold for the month-plus trip their stipulations set us on._ _

__Traveling with Andrew and Kevin was nothing like traveling with my mother. For one, they didn’t care a rat’s ass about being subtle: Kevin proved to have annoying standards about where he slept and what he ate, and Andrew didn’t hesitate to pick a fight with anyone who looked wrong at Kevin. They didn’t blend, they didn’t duck, they weren’t quiet or impartial or inoffensive. I finally convinced them to ditch the truck by pilfering some bills from their suitcase and buying three tickets that would get us from one side of the mountains to the other, ignoring Kevin’s affronted guffawing at being stolen from and Andrew’s coolly appraising gaze. He seemed to be able to tell that I’d almost bought two tickets and made for the cargo trains stopped in the town over; that I didn’t struck him as curious; that he was curious, I didn’t care. As long as we didn’t go the whole stretch, the train was the least of all evils._ _

__Irritated and tied up as I was, I would’ve had to be blind not to notice the Rockies’ beauty, pine-covered cliffs and lazy, sparkling rivers. At one point, a pack of mountain goats stalled the train from moving for half an afternoon -- any time the conductor tried to shoo them off, the rams set their heads down and charged before prancing back to their spot dead in the center. At last the staff grew so annoyed with the delay that they asked if anyone on board had a gun - a woman with a southern drawl stepped forward, and the shot scattered the creatures from the rails. That evening, the dining car served spit-roasted, honey-glazed goat._ _

__Four years I’d had at my uncle’s manor, learning arithmetic and writing and hunting and gunmanship and everything that could possibly be done while stuck on a dozen acres’ worth of property. It’d been stifling, truthfully: after twelve years on the run, staying within one man’s property put an uncomfortable itch under my skin. I ran its border more times than I could possibly say -- I ran past, too, once or twice (or thrice, but only thrice). The first time, I came back within hours, gravitating toward my mother like a dog with its tail tucked, unprotesting as she shook me by the hair until my scalp tore. The second time, Hatford’s men collected me in northern Ireland. The third, I didn’t fight at all. I should’ve asked her _why,_ and _how_ and _don’t you feel like screaming, waking up in the same place over and over again?_ I should’ve done a lot of things. But I hadn’t, and now it was too late, as it usually was._ _

__Andrew watched me like my mother had at Hatford’s manor: like he suspected I was waiting for a chance to leave him behind, and he’d cut my feet clean off before he let me._ _

__It was startlingly, comfortingly familiar._ _

__In Denver, we nabbed a Model T. I told them they needed to lose luggage, that it was weighing us down - every time we stopped they had to haul it in, four clunky bags, and every morning they took precious time in packing up again. They whittled down to two suitcases and one bag, and I didn’t say anything but Andrew sneered at me. “Are you in that big of a rush to die?”_ _

__There wasn’t anything to say to that either, so I scowled and turned away._ _

__Kevin looked at me like he knew the answer, but he didn’t have the guts to say anything._ _

__I told them not to call me Nathaniel, that it was one step away from my last name and if one of them screwed up at the wrong time it was a matter of days before our trip was cut short._ _

__(That and my innards twisted up every time I heard it, a name unspoken for sixteen years brought back on the day I signed my death warrant with my mother’s ashes. I’d go mad if they persisted with it, if it followed me to bed and lunch and dinner and any time in between.)_ _

__“Fine,” Andrew shrugged, like the request meant nothing, like my name, ultimately, meant nothing. “But we have to call you something.”_ _

__At my uncle’s, they’d changed my name from Stephen to Weston. In America, it changed again to Neil._ _

__( _Isn’t that too close?_ I’d asked, my eyes down and arms straight at my sides. Neil. Nathaniel. Take out the inside and what did you get but a hollowed shell?)_ _

__( _It’s what we have_ , my mother had said. _That’s that._ )_ _

__(That was that.)_ _

__I’d less than a month with Neil Josten, but it matched whatever papers backed my immigration. It was the last name my mother used._ _

__So I gave them that: _Neil Josten._ Andrew looked like he wanted to comment on the same thing I had, but miraculously, he and Kevin both kept their mouths shut, nodded, and then - that was that._ _

__They knew about the Butcher, knew what business he ran, and I was sure Kevin filled in gaps about the Moriyamas for Andrew, but no matter how long I waited for the questions they didn’t pry about where I’d been prior to California, and I didn’t offer it, and that, too, was that._ _

__Money dwindled faster than it should’ve. The two had enough to start a new life in Sacramento, but Andrew’s habit was expensive to keep up, especially with a new junker every city that didn’t know his face and denied cutting him deals. Kevin wasted time every morning and evening with an exercise routine -- he also couldn’t sit still for long, his complaints growing once we hit the fifth or sixth hour mark, mood soured and unreasonable by the ninth, to the point even _Andrew’s_ patience frayed and he jerked the car off the road and almost bodily threw Kevin out to _run, jump, fight a tree, punch Nathaniel, I don’t fucking care, just shut_ up. Eventually Kevin took a part of that to heart, eyeing me where I remained on the car’s bench, hunched low to keep out of view from any passer-bys. Not that there were any this far in the countryside, but old habits were as hard for me to kick as Andrew’s were for him, apparently. I eyed Kevin back, face carefully schooled into neutrality. Everything in me itched to run, too, a restless tick in my leg and frequent rabbit-race in my heart, but I didn’t want them knowing that more than they already did._ _

__The dirt roads, when it rained, became slick and untraversable, and more than once, summer showers trapped us in an out-of-the-way motel for days at a time. We always bought the cheapest option, which tended to be one bed and not a lot of floor space. Kevin and I typically crowded onto the bed while Andrew took the floor by the door -- the first time, I’d wedged myself into a corner, but Andrew had hauled me up by my shirt and shoved me onto the bed, growling that I could catch ill and die in Baltimore, not before. It was after a particularly long stretch across boring Kansas that Kevin stopped over where I lay on one side of the ratty rented bed and, face scrunched up like he smelled rotten eggs, asked, “You still box?”_ _

__It’d been close to a week since I’d properly stretched my legs. I burned on the inside, all restless energy and too many thoughts, my mother and my father and what I’d do when I reached my destination and how these two had lived so long with how they carelessly they lived. A bit of me remained naive, kept Kevin Day up on his pedestal; the rest filled me with a trapped feeling not unlike Hatford’s manor, put me in a box and shook me up and screamed to move, and the combination freed my tongue before I meant to. “I haven’t got gloves.”_ _

__That wasn’t a no. A light sparked behind his eyes._ _

__“We can bare-knuckle it. I’ve extra wraps.”_ _

__My finger tapped out an erratic beat on my knee. I licked my lips, bit the inside of my cheek. It wasn’t like I’d be able to sleep tonight any better than I had the night before. I glanced to the window, the downpour outside--_ _

__“Get off the bed,” Kevin said, and he didn’t smile or lose the pinch between his eyes that he had whenever he looked at me, but something had put a bit of life into his soul. Curious despite myself, I got off the bed. “Lift that corner.” I did, and the bed tipped, went up on its side and cleared a space just big enough for us to stretch and warm up and, eventually, trade a few taps and blocks. Mostly, he worked on correcting my horrendous blocks, and I worked hard to trip him up for even a second. I didn’t manage on that first night, but unbeknownst to me, it was the start of a routine._ _

__Andrew, back against the door and high as a kite, didn’t laugh. He watched, smoked his pipe, and - when Kevin and I wore ourselves down to the ground, coated in sweat and feeling maybe a bit better, my brain at last remembering to keep tabs on the other body in the room -- had his head tipped back, eyes closed in what could be generously called peace._ _

__Not that night, but another night - and nights prior to that night, and nights after that night, and _way too often_ \- I learned why Andrew put Kevin and me on the bed. _ _

__That is: Kevin clung like a limpet in his sleep._ _

__At Hatford’s, my mother and I ceased to sleep back-to-back. She still refused to have me sleep outside of her line of sight, but even before, even on the run, we’d been light sleepers. It wasn’t as if she were the warm, cuddly, maternal type._ _

__So when a sleeping Kevin gravitated toward the other heat source and threw an arm around my shoulders, I woke up with my heart in my throat and an elbow thrown back into his stomach. Wakefulness hit him like a sledgehammer: he gasped and rolled away to safety -- not aware of who I was with, I fell off the bed and onto a pissed off alley cat._ _

__At least, that’s what it felt like when Andrew tore nails down my arm and then fit hands around my throat, thumbs pressed into my trachea. I regained my wits to the tune of Kevin choking back his breath and a sober Andrew’s nose an inch from mine, the snarl on his lips more terrifying than any knife. I scrabbled at his fingers, air cut, and then somehow got a knee in his gut: he flinched back, his grip loosened, and I flipped us, slammed his shoulders down and made to get away. I reached the doorknob before his hand found my ankle and pulled my feet out from under me. I crashed into the suitcases, kicked out, met flesh -- he was on me in a flash, fist drawn back, and then Kevin found his voice or his words found our ears because the fist didn’t land and we heard, “Hey, hey-- no- _Andrew._ ”_ _

__It probably wasn’t enough to stop him, actually, but maybe Kevin being alright on top of him seeing my face kept my nose from being broken. We stared at each other, chests heaving, his knees pinning my arms, a hand at my throat and his weight heavy on my stomach. Our eyes adjusted to the dim light, and slowly, he backed off._ _

__When I ran out, shoes laced a block away, no one followed._ _

__I returned fifteen hours later, hungry and thirsty and blissfully blank, half-expecting them to be gone. They weren’t. We didn’t talk about the night, we acted like nothing had happened, we changed nothing, and the next time Kevin woke me up with his clinging, I kept myself still and silent and counted out my heartbeat until the sun rose and we got back onto the road. Sleeplessness was a constant weight on my shoulder, cat-naps in the car the only saving grace, but I’d had worse._ _

__One time I woke up to find glinting eyes watching me. It’d taken a bit to fight back a flight reflex, but when I didn’t run, Andrew said, “Irritating, isn’t he?”_ _

__Unwilling to wake Kevin Day up even if this was all his fault, I whispered back, “You could say that again.”_ _

__Andrew’s mouth quirked on one side, there and gone. “Only positive is, he sleeps like a corpse. You could practice the trumpet and he wouldn’t budge.”_ _

__I wondered what that was like, and how anyone could manage it._ _

__Andrew kept quiet, his gaze unwavering. I realized with a start that this was probably the most I’d heard him talk while he was sober. He cut the dope sometimes, though he always gave in when withdrawal shook him up, a tremble he couldn’t stop in his hands or abrupt stops to empty his stomach on the side of the road. Kevin never reacted or commented. I did, once or twice, a sharp _are you serious?_ as he pulled his pipe and lit up in the back of a restaurant. His habit was going to get us thrown in jail._ _

___Hush,_ he’d say, breathing in the smoke, eyes closed for the rush. _I know my limits.__ _

__I don’t know why him being sober gave me confidence. Maybe it was a natural ineptitude at handling my own attitude - mother would probably agree. Still, alone for the first time with him, I asked, “What are you doing here, Andrew?”_ _

__His head tilted a centimeter._ _

__After a second, I elaborated. “Kevin Day’s not your problem.”_ _

__“Oh,” he said. Then, “Of course.”_ _

__Kevin wasn’t. Kevin was his own problem, at best. A faded boxer trying to scratch back to a corner of his former glory; a man on the run, ignoring what it _meant_ to be on the run; a second chance that, honestly, I didn’t know he deserved. If I barely grasped how these two survived together, I knew without a doubt that Kevin would have long been dead on his own._ _

__But Andrew would’ve been fine. The Butcher didn’t know him, didn’t care about him. Without Kevin, he was a nobody, and he didn’t seem to realize the value in that. If he did, he never would’ve given it up._ _

__This time, I waited him out._ _

__He sat very still when he was sober. Although he tended to sprawl and lounge under the influence, he always carried a hint of manic energy, always walked the wrong side of a sparking wire, like he was just waiting for the opportunity to shed his skin and fall into a million bitty pieces. In the half-moon’s light, even his blinks seemed measured, purposeful. Like all that energy that he had when he was high was just that: from the high, and once he came down, he was hollow._ _

__“Your thinking’s off.” He finally returned. If I’d been able to sleep with someone else draped on me, I might’ve dozed off. “As usual. You’re applying your own small world notion of _important_ to me, even though I very much don’t belong to your small world.”_ _

__That made me frown. If anyone had a small world, it’d be the guy who’d attached himself to a singular person and acted like they made up his whole life ( _and yes, I realized the irony, thank you_ ) . Ever stubborn, I prodded: “Then, why?”_ _

__His foot tapped once against the ground, eyes unblinking._ _

__“You really want to know.” Not surprised, but not derisive, either. Just. What it was._ _

__I paid him back in kind. “I do.”_ _

__“He didn’t have to run from them.” Andrew replied, a steady, unaffected voice in the dark. “Still, he did, even though it almost cost him his life. He escaped when he didn’t know he was trapped, but knew it meant no one would help him.”_ _

__That sounded stupider than I thought his reasoning would be._ _

__Tired, over-heated and wanting to push the line with the one that thought he could keep me boxed in, I said as much. “None of that has anything to do with you.”_ _

__Andrew shrugged. “You asked why. That’s why._ _

__“Besides,” he continued, settling further back against the door, moonlight barely touching him, “when I promised I’d protect him, he didn’t believe me. Now he does.”_ _

__I bit my tongue, unimpressed and unsurprised I was unimpressed. Andrew saw the look in my face and snorted._ _

__“Why are you here?” Lazily spoken, the question nonetheless wiped my expression clear._ _

__“Because you’re sleeping in front of the door,” I shot back, “and you’re too heavy to move.”_ _

__He bared his teeth, but it wasn’t a smile. It might’ve been a little amused. I really couldn’t tell._ _

__“You could out-run either of us, easy. I’ve seen how you weave through crowds; we wouldn’t even know you’d left until you were too far away to be found. If you’re deluding yourself in thinking I’m the one keeping you here, give it up - delusion’s ugly.”_ _

__That rankled, how close his words came to the truth. I couldn’t move with Kevin at my back, but I sunk into myself._ _

__“You make a big deal about how we’re slowing you down, but you put up with it. You could’ve convinced us to take a train from California to Maryland. You could’ve gone yourself, and been there by now.” I opened my mouth, pricked at the implication that-- “Simmer down, idiot. I don’t think you’re going back on what you plan to do, whatever insane and suicidal thing that is.”_ _

__Dry as the Nevada desert, I said, “Then what do you think?”_ _

__Andrew’s head tipped back, soft light playing alone his pale throat._ _

__Rather than a direct answer: “We’re close to Oklahoma. That’s the half-way marker.” A pause. “Keep practicing with Kevin, or I’ll start thinking you actually have your head on straight about something. Your left side’s sloppy.”_ _

__At my back, the man in question shifted, his forehead burrowed between my shoulder blades. I very carefully did not punch his teeth in. I’d tried stuffing clothing between us, I’d tried not-so-gently shoving him off-- either he woke up to growl at me before falling asleep and shuffling closer again, or he just skipped to shuffling closer, and it seriously wasn’t worth the effort to fight._ _

__“Not as sloppy as his,” I grumbled at last. That made Andrew snort, dark, quiet amusement that wasn’t even really amused returning._ _

__

__

__In Wichita, we stopped at a breakfast diner that boasted one waitress and two pancake flippers. Shoved into a booth in the back corner, I pawed through our shared wallet (‘shared,’ but only Kevin and I were allowed to hold onto it - by Andrew’s own admission, there were some stretches of land between towns where he didn’t trust himself not to spend every dime on extra smack) and came up disturbingly short. Looking up at one curious and one impassive gaze, I shook out the two-fifty left and said, “We need money.”_ _

__“Some great son of a crime boss you are,” jeered Andrew, his leg bouncing an arrhythmic beat under the table, “can’t you mug your way into fortune?”_ _

__I ignored him._ _

__“If we detour to Kansas City, the place is packed with boxers looking to make a name for themselves.” Kevin offered, ever single-minded. “We could fetch a heavy purse.”_ _

__“We?” I echoed, though that was hardly the most unbelievable part of his suggestion._ _

__“He doesn’t even have the equipment,” said Andrew, putting voice to another fair but not top concerning point._ _

__Kevin frowned, but he regrouped quickly. He’d been thinking about this. “You can borrow my gloves and we’ll make sure not to face off against each other or at the same time. You’ve got a lot of work to do, but you’re not as terrible as you could be.”_ _

__I was so struck with being complimented from the ever-negative Kevin Day as well as awe-struck at the blind-sightedness of the plan, Andrew beat me in a reply._ _

__“That detour puts us ten hours north. We’re heading south. Pick a different city, and ideally, a different career.”_ _

__“It’d take at least a week for a different job to pay off, and even then, not near as much.” He’d really been thinking about this. “There’s so many amateurs there, we could blend in easy. Overall, Kansas City has the highest pay-out for the lowest risk.”_ _

__“I can’t do boxing,” I finally said, the real issue coming to a head._ _

__Kevin stared at me like I’d sprouted gills and confessed to being a merman. “Why not?”_ _

__“Too many eyes for our dear ghostie,” Andrew chirped. “All watching him, with the click-click-flash of a dozen cameras.” Unfortunately, he was right. I jabbed a thumb in his direction and nodded, not entirely trusting my voice._ _

__Still, Kevin wasn’t convinced. “Dye your hair, sign under another name. You’ve been legally dead for sixteen years, who’s gonna recognize you?”_ _

__I shook my head before he even finished, mother’s disappointment crowding up my skull for even contemplating going in the ring. Not only that, but contemplating it, and talking about it in a not-so-crowded _public place._ Kevin, of course, didn’t prescribe to this line of thinking, and pressed on as if getting a yes meant life or death. Given how much time we spent on the road arguing about different aspects of the game - Andrew our silent driver and witness - I wouldn’t be surprised if it did._ _

__“ _I’ve_ been boxing half a year, and nothing’s happened.” I froze. “Two weeks in Kansas City will net us enough to get to the Atlantic and plus some.”_ _

__Andrew guffawed as if startled into it, his bubbling laugh escalating swiftly into a cackle._ _

__Kevin ignored him, eyes trained on me._ _

__I forced down budding anger as well as I could. For the first time since California, I really felt like I believed in something: Kevin Day was a _wanker._ “Our situations are a little different.” _ _

__“I don’t see--”_ _

__“ _I’m not boxing,_ ” I snarled, hand slamming down on the table. Andrew mimed putting his hands up in shock, the manic grin still splitting his face. Kevin straightened, everything about him pulled back. In the corner of my eye, I saw our waitress twist and stare, her mouth agape. I snapped my mouth shut, anger rising up to choke me. I counted to ten, reached four, saw Kevin open his mouth--_ _

__I dropped the wallet and stood, no longer hungry. “I’ll be in the car. Meet me there when you’re done.”_ _

__As I left, I heard Kevin’s confusion. “I’m not wrong. It’d only take two weeks.”_ _

__“You’re addicted, Baby. I call his pancakes,” Andrew replied, still snickering._ _

__The problem wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy re-learning a sport I’d once been a natural at. It was that I _did_ enjoy it, and going to a match - being in a match - well, wouldn’t that be top? _ _

__That was the problem. That was always the problem._ _

__I ended up curled in the space behind the front bench and the back seat, hands over my head and face tucked between my knees, breathing forcibly slow and measured, eyes squeezed shut. It would’ve felt better to run, but I couldn’t run, people would see, they would leave. I needed to take moments like these enough at Hatford’s that I’d stopped tracking the reasons why._ _

__

__

__We drove up to Kansas City. I picked up part-time work along the outskirts, working the roads President Harding was so keen on seeing built but of which hadn’t been much help to us so far. Kevin ran the boxing circuit and, just as he’d thought, pulled in five times what I scrounged together. Beyond contributing enough not to draw overt ire, Andrew wasted money on his addiction, or so my opinion went -- he found work at the gym, somewhere and in some fashion, sticking ever close to Kevin. We ended up staying for a month: I took to running every morning, ignoring Kevin’s jabs and growls about me joining him at the gym, while Andrew would sometimes disappear for thirty minutes to an hour every other day. Within just a month, it was probably more time apart from each other than they’d had for the entire year they’d traveled together. Andrew took it better than Kevin._ _

__Dipping into emergency money that I’d hidden from them ( _isn’t that our money?_ \-- _yes. aren’t you glad I’m managing it?_ ), we found a one-bedroom flat an older woman kept free for her traveling daughter: it came with a kitchenette, a bathroom, a sunken-in floral print couch, and a sagging double bed. _ _

__“That’s _it_ ,” I snarled, snagging the pillow off my side of the bed and throwing it onto the couch before whipping around to jab a finger at the two fools staring at me from across the room. It felt childish after I did it, but I’d made a decision and I was sticking to it. Without the car to catch cat naps in and the heavy labor of digging holes in dirt for hours on end, _on top of_ staying in one place for so long and seeing Lola’s smile in every flapper that passed, my nerves were fried. “I’m done with your bed-hogging. Andrew, I get the couch.”_ _

__“No,” Andrew said, with his eyebrows up and his pipe in his hand, looked _amused_ , and not in a way that boded well. In that moment, I couldn’t care less. “You don’t.”_ _

__“Yes,” I parroted, flashing a mean smile of my own, “I do.”_ _

__Andrew’s eyes widened, and his lips curled to show teeth. I stared him down, animal to rabid animal, then, pointedly, sat down._ _

__“Is it really that big of an issue?” Kevin groused from his spot on his side that he would not keep to because he was a limpet and a smotherer and all-around awful bed fellow._ _

__“Yes,” I snapped. Andrew didn’t react at all. He kept his eyes glued to mine. “If it wasn’t for his out of control _habit_ , we wouldn’t have ran out of money as quickly as we did, and we wouldn’t be stuck here.”_ _

__Andrew chipped in, “Ah, the blame game. Here, I’ve got one. If we hadn’t met into you, we wouldn’t have a problem.”_ _

__“If you hadn’t met me, you’d still be skulking around a factory, drugged to the gills, wallowing in self-pity and counting down the days until you croaked.”_ _

__“I can take the couch,” Kevin at last said, looking a trifle awkward in the silence that stretched between us. I finally broke my stare to glance at him: he didn’t look happy about the offer, spoiled Baby that he’d been, but that he made it at all was, I suppose, something. In that moment, it felt like the barest amount he could do. Perhaps sensing what Andrew or I would propose next, he rolled his eyes and waved a dismissive hand. “One of us could sleep on the floor, if we were _five_.”_ _

__The silence continued._ _

__I raised my chin. I wasn’t deluding myself in thinking I was taking the higher road -- more, something in me wanted to push, demanded to _know_. Andrew kept strict lines around what he did and didn’t tolerate; for some reason that wouldn’t leave me alone but refused to be pinned down and so I consciously ignored it as well as I could, I was determined to learn each one before Baltimore. My throat remembered thumbs pressed in and air cut out. The bone-deep exhaustion in me remembered sleep fondly, and was willing to risk asphyxiation for another shot at it. “Fine with me.”_ _

__“Stay to your side,” Andrew said as we settled into our new places, still smiling and smelling heavily of sweet smoke, Kevin already dead to the world on the flower-print couch, “and you’ll make it to Baltimore.”_ _

__“Not a problem,” I replied, put myself at the bed’s edge, turned my back to him, and shut my eyes. Kevin might’ve had no qualms about sleeping close to buck naked, stripping to his skivvies without a thought (and I’ll admit, seeing the two inked on his chest up close was pretty keen-- pictures never did boxers justice), but I always kept on a collared shirt, and Andrew rarely lost more than his socks. The mattress shifted as my new bed-mate supposedly got himself comfortable, the blanket sagged low in the gap between us, and then the room fell quiet._ _

__Honestly?_ _

__It was the best sleep I’d had in weeks. The bed felt _massive_._ _

__Kevin complained about his neck after being regulated to the couch for the foreseeable future, but Andrew and I both ignored him, and anyway, as my sleeping schedule began to keep a rhythm, our money pile grew, and my anger dimmed, I admitted to myself that complaining was just something Kevin did. If he didn’t have something negative to say at least a dozen times a day, he wouldn’t be him._ _

__(That’s the moment it all started. That admission to myself, that construction of a group of three rather than a them-and-me.)_ _

__(Them, me, us.)_ _

__(Hindsight makes everything so obvious.)_ _

__Another bag joined their suitcases, as Andrew forced me to buy enough to fill it. I’d clothes to replace the stained set and an extra pair besides, previously kept in their ‘miscellaneous tools’ bag (which included everything from expensive boxing gloves to a sewing kit to the black pipe to a beat-up copy of _Building Rome in a Day,_ which incredibly belonged to Kevin Day), but apparently as we spent a month in one place and most of it toiling under the hot sun, he felt assured that I was ‘disgusting’ and ‘needed variety, two shirts does not qualify.’ _ _

__I invested in bleach for my hair, dog tags, a beat up army cap, and practiced miming a limp._ _

__“Cranky, unwanted veteran,” Andrew labeled me during one demonstration, fingers folded over his belly and eyes fever-bright. “Suits you.”_ _

__Again, my mother’s ghost weighed as an albatross around my neck. This time, though, I kept my head up, and tucked a notebook filled with coded plans on what I’d do once we reached Baltimore into a secret pocket I sewed in the bag’s lining. I didn’t know what I was going to do, and recently I’d taken to racing off whenever my head filled up too much with uncertainties and fear despite the fact Andrew and Kevin knew I ran from weakness and not exercise. I passed the city limits a few times, and one Sunday, ran and walked and ran the whole daylight hours away. It felt like breathing again after being locked in a dusty room for years: the proof I wasn’t with my uncle helped. And I always returned before Andrew fell asleep, so at least my feet knew how to do that._ _

__Days passed. Kevin complained. Andrew also _disappeared_ \- Kevin’s words, mind, snapped at Andrew from the dining table while I stirred pasta in a dingy pot -, and Kevin didn’t take that too well. Andrew would sneer or scoff, depending on his drug intake, and, with a jitter in his leg or eerily still, also depending on his drug intake, brush the concerns off, saying Kevin was fine in Kansas City’s third-rate gym, wasn’t he boxer, couldn’t he take care of himself once in awhile? He didn’t say those words exactly, more _it’s none of your business_ and _quit asking, I’m not changing_ , but the meaning came across loud and clear to me, which mean it must have knocked into Kevin like a freight train. After the first week, he stopped arguing about it, and for a bit, I thought that was that._ _

__Then the two showed up to the apartment later and later, and then Andrew showed up alone, and I pretended to fall asleep while he smoked at the window, his leg jittering but his face unconcerned. I didn’t ask. I did give up pretending to sleep when he started banging pots around, sitting up in the bed with a discontent frown and masterful I-just-woke-up face. He took one look at me and scoffed, said, “Finally. You’re not as good of an actor as you think you are.”_ _

__“Then why not just say something?”_ _

__He intentionally dropped a frying pan on the wrought iron stove, and didn’t have a speck of apology when I grimaced at the crash._ _

__“I need a pack of smokes. You’re coming with me.” Abandoning the empty pots - of course he hadn’t actually been cooking anything, had just been making a racket, small favors that the woman below us was hard of hearing - he trudged to the door and snagged his shoes. I didn’t budge, but then he shot me a look and added, mockingly, “ _Marlboros_ , ghostie. Don’t you worry your tiny brain about my stock; I’m always covered.”_ _

__I wouldn’t have minded a cigarette, myself, but I stayed in bed a second longer before getting up to go with him._ _

__It became clear pretty quick that he took me along because he was having a bad time of it that day: he kept his hands shoved in his pockets, which he only did when he couldn’t get them to stop shaking and didn’t want others to notice. His foot wouldn’t stop tapping as we stood in the check-out line at the corner store, and his eyes jumped between anything and everything that we passed, not looking violent or anxious so much as plainly, intensely impatient. The clerk gave him a funny look as I paid for the Marlboros, then whispered to me, “He with you?” when he tipped his head back and meandered sightlessly past the medicinal jars. I nodded. The clerk clucked his tongue as he handed over the cigarette carton. “Get him outta here before he spooks the other customers.”_ _

__There was only a gnarled old man and harried younger woman in the shop, but I bit my tongue and left. Even seeing things that might not be there, Andrew fell into step behind me the moment I left the shop. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up having a strung-out guy on my heels, so I ducked into an alley and he followed like he was on a string and I spun, shoved the smokes at him, and snapped, “Where’s Kevin?”_ _

__The thought was that he was why Andrew’s nerves were raw, that he’d decided to camp at the gym and declared his intention to marry a personification of boxing, but it didn’t really make sense. Our travels up until then pointed to Andrew being attached to Kevin by the hip; the sudden distance and dismissiveness on Andrew’s end didn’t sit well with me._ _

__The man in question shrugged, carton disappearing into a pocket as his foot took up an irritated beat. “He made a new friend. The new friend took him to dinner.”_ _

__I… didn’t know what to make of that. How was Kevin thinking about making friends and going to dinners? The only thing that came to mind rang with years of my mother’s warnings, so I asked: “He’s got a girl?”_ _

__Andrew cut me a funny look. “No. A boxing friend.”_ _

__Oh._ _

__I eyed him a moment longer, silent as he began to sway, realized he’d started to sway, and forcibly stopped. It soured his mood something awful, this evidence that he couldn’t control his body, or so it seemed to me -- I decided to drop the topic and hurried back to our makeshift apartment._ _

__Every other day, Andrew came back first and alone. Sometimes he headed out at a certain time to fetch Kevin, but sometimes he stayed in, alternating between cigarettes and the pipe at the window._ _

__“Just kick the habit,” I said one night, having finished the local newspaper and its crossword, as well as the _New York Daily Times_ and its crossword, and the _Chicago Tribune_ and half of its crossword, because the way his foot kept twitching against the wood walls was driving _me_ up the walls. That bad trip wasn’t the last, wasn’t just some fluke of emotion - it looked like he was trying to ween himself off the drugs, his intakes lower and the sober consequences steeper, but as much as I quietly approved, he was doing a shit job of it. “Go cold turkey. Or don’t you have the guts?”_ _

__“Shut up,” he replied, his hair more ragged than usual and the circles under his eyes tinted green. “You got a problem? Leave.”_ _

__I meant to turn my back and ignore him after that, but there was something about the tension in his spine and sheen along his forehead that wasn’t right. A frown crossed my face, eyebrows pinching together._ _

__He scowled and pointed his pipe at me, the motions jerky and delayed. “Quit looking at me like that.”_ _

___Like what?_ I thought, but asked, “You aren’t trying to quit?”_ _

__Pipe jammed back into his mouth and scowl deepening, it became clear he was sweating through his shirt and vest despite the breeze wafting in through the window. He refused to acknowledge it, though, apparently stubborn enough to sit in a puddle of his own feverish heat than lose a layer or two. That was something I understood, so that wasn’t what I proposed._ _

__I went out on a limb, and guessed, “You got dealt bad stock?” and was right, given how he rolled his eyes but didn’t immediately reply. A little less impressed, I said, “Must be hard changing up dealers every city.”_ _

__“Most around here lace their dope so their clients get hooked faster.” He told me, though his voice said this was more a mild inconvenience than something that was eating him up. “The ones that don’t charge an arm and a leg. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re here because we’re a little low on funds.”_ _

__“And you won’t take the cheaper stuff.”_ _

__“I know my limits. I don’t need someone looking to make a little extra on the return tampering with my dosage.”_ _

__That--- was responsible. In a certain way._ _

__He gazed at me, a little feverish, a little out of touch. Then, just before I was about to let it drop and turn back to my crossword, he said, “You think I haven’t tried to stop?”_ _

__With honesty, “If you wanted to, I can’t imagine you not doing it.”_ _

__He snorted, his head banging back against the window sill. Eyes lidded, he gave me a bit of truth. “Used to go through coke like you see me hit the pipe. Swapped it for opium. Shit’s easier to measure, easier to regulate, and won’t fuck your memory up near as bad. Hell, I hear some doctors recommend it.”_ _

__“Not for recreational use,” I returned, and he shrugged._ _

___It was better._ _ _

__“What made you start?” I finally asked, because it seemed like about time I did, and I was curious, besides. In between the manic episodes, in his decisions and single-minded focus under the smoky fog, he didn’t seem like he needed the escape. Then again, I’d never known an Andrew fully clean._ _

__The pause stretched out, smoke a thin blue screen as he contemplated me through it. The sweet smell hit me first, though under it was ash and fire, and it was familiar._ _

__Finally, he asked, “Why’d you run?”_ _

__I tensed. They hadn’t pried, and I hadn’t offered, and it was better that way._ _

__After a time, his expression leveled out, and he jammed his twitching foot under a leg to keep it still. “Your father wants you dead. From the sound of it, he killed your mother. All because you ran.”_ _

__The words wouldn’t come. Andrew waited, restless but patient. At last I managed, “We couldn’t stay.”_ _

__“But now you’re going back.”_ _

__“There isn’t anywhere else I could go.”_ _

__“You could keep running. You’re far better at it than us.” Whatever he caught on my face made his lips twist, though it wasn’t exactly a smile - it came off as much realer than that. “Every time we stopped somewhere we didn’t need to, you looked like you wanted to take our heads off.”_ _

__“We stopped at a _community cook-out._ ”_ _

__“Barbara hadn’t lied - her chili was the best in the nation.”_ _

__I wouldn’t know. I’d stayed in the car._ _

__“Is it your choice?” He asked, and he didn’t move and his tone didn’t change but I looked up, sharper, all the same. “Going back?”_ _

__I wouldn’t return to England, to stuffy rooms and finite space and locked doors when I strayed too far. To my uncle who would look at me and only see his sister, who would either lock me up for good or drive me away for who my face matched. I could run, but my mother had been _the best_ , had been the very reason we’d made it to England. Seattle was-- a planned fluke, and then an unplanned fluke, and now, there were too many unknowns and too many possibilities but only two almost-strangers who were faster becoming not-at-all-strangers. And they were mixed up in this, and they didn’t even realize what traveling with me meant, but then, they didn’t fully let me travel as I had, either._ _

__It wasn’t anything like swapping one drug for another, taking _the lesser of two evils_ , but -- in a way - it was. _ _

__“I have to see this through,” I said before I realized I’d began to speak. Andrew’s eyes focused on me, his back straightening; all he did was watch, however, and wait, and the simple attention kept my throat from closing again. ”I need to know he can be stopped for good. Even if I don’t make it all the way, I need to try.”_ _

__Otherwise, I’d never stop running._ _

__Andrew contemplated me, took in the whole picture that I made: words small but determined, newspapers piled to my side on a fading floral couch. Whatever he found he deemed acceptable, and then he made an offer that kick-started my heart. At first it seemed like a cruel joke from a half-drugged addict._ _

__“I can make sure you get there.”_ _

__“What, like protection?”_ _

__“I offered Kevin a similar deal a year ago.”_ _

__He was completely serious._ _

__“You don’t know what you’re up against.”_ _

__“I don’t give a shit what I’m up against. If I make a promise, I keep it.”_ _

__Silence._ _

__“What’s in it for you?”_ _

__His eyebrow quirked, his hands balled into fists in his lap. It didn’t even count as a point of tension, since it definitely stemmed from the drugs._ _

__“You don’t believe I could manage it?”_ _

__That, and -- “I don’t make deals with all the odds stacked in one corner.”_ _

__“No,” he returned, cool as the night breeze, “you make plans with all the odds stacked against you.”_ _

__My gaze stuck on his pipe, but that question wasn’t being answered tonight. I licked my lips and stalled. It wasn’t like I couldn’t defend myself. It was like I was on the road to my death, and I was terrified of reaching it, but even more terrified of not. My father’s men were out there, even if they were down by two. _More_ than that fear, though -- more than that, I-- well, I. _ _

__I._ _

__“I’ll make sure when we get there, they won’t look twice at Kevin or you.”_ _

__Bloodshot eyes narrowed at me. “And now you don’t think I can handle even _one_.” _ _

__“It’s not that-- you said it yourself. There’s going to need to be a bonfire for them to miss Kevin Day returning for his throne.” Hatford had said the Butcher was old news, which meant - possibly - Hatford was the new news. Once I reached Baltimore, I could call on his debt to my mother and secure Kevin’s place. It wouldn’t be easy, and I wouldn’t have long at all, but it wasn’t impossible, and Andrew was looking at me like he was trying to puzzle me out. I met his gaze, shoulders tense. “Deal?”_ _

__The puzzling look disappeared. He leaned forward, the black in his pipe flaking away as grey ash._ _

__“Agreed.”_ _

__For whatever it meant, that was that._ _

__Too many weeks later, we pinned down a date to leave: that Friday, we’d find a new automobile, give the grandma a head’s up, and move out. A heat-wave turned work into a nightmare, but at least it meant it took all of five seconds to fall asleep once I hit the sack. The Wednesday before our departure, I returned to the sweltering apartment - windows open and ice buckets or not, the single room became an _oven_ \- to find Kevin back earlier than his now-usual, his hands wrapped up and Andrew a bored-looking aid in some demonstration. When I walked through the door, Andrew took one look at me and sighed, “ _Finally_ ,” before he went from holding a pillow to twisting Kevin around by one arm and shoving him toward me. “Make _him_ your guinea pig, he’ll actually enjoy it. I’m eating dinner.”_ _

__Kevin looked a little dazed at having his defense thoroughly invaded, but he perked up as he saw me. My arms felt like they wanted to fall off for the next month after hauling rocks and cement-bags around, but he wouldn’t hear any of it, and-- honestly- our impromptu matches along the road had been one highlight I didn’t mind re-visiting._ _

__That was my thought before he laid me flat in under thirty seconds. It grew into a need after that._ _

__He didn’t grin, but there was a look of approval on his face when I bounced back up._ _

__By the stove, Andrew scoffed. “Junkies. Both of you.”_ _

__“That dip in your upper cut’s new,” I remarked. Kevin hummed, shifting on his toes as I shook out my numb arms._ _

__“Jeremy taught me it.”_ _

__“Jeremy?”_ _

__“Boxing friend,” Andrew clarified, then added, “who he obsesses over,” which Kevin rolled his eyes at. “You should see the doe eyes he gets whenever Jeremy’s in the ring, Josten. It’s hard to tell if he wants to marry him or be him.”_ _

__“He’s got great technique. I’d be a fool not to pay attention.”_ _

__With a cluck of his tongue, he cut us a manic smile. “People are going to get ideas, the way you stalk him everywhere he goes.”_ _

__“I don’t _stalk him._ ” Kevin sniffed, and put his arms up. I mirrored him. “He’s good enough to be pro, is all.”_ _

__“So why isn’t he?” I asked. Kevin took his first swing; I blocked, the force of it rattling my teeth._ _

__“He won’t take sponsorship from anybody he doesn’t think is clean.”_ _

__“Oh.”_ _

__“Yeah.” Another hit - a weave, a side-step, and he clipped my ear. Even with four fingers, he packed a hell of a wallop. Through the split-second ringing to follow, I thought I caught blatant admiration (for the boxing friend) and disgust (for himself). “Principles like that really slim down your opportunities.”_ _

__Later, I brought up an abandoned junker that wouldn’t be too hard to fix up if we cannibalized the old car. For a moment, Kevin looked hesitant to leave; by the time Andrew pointed out the ridiculousness of trading one Model T for another, the look had passed._ _

__

__

__We packed up our dinged-up jitney and headed back south with a heavy wallet and momentarily tense silence._ _

__After so long out of the car or maybe so regular in the ring, Kevin’s restlessness spiked dramatically, and we ended up stopping for peculiar, pointless reasons. _That town claims to have the world’s biggest peanut. That one has the world’s best smoothies. This one has a circus. There, Kevin, your alternative career. Haha, Andrew.__ _

__I rationalized that we were off any kind of main road, our trajectory east but terribly unpredictable, and we never stayed anywhere for long. Even when we stopped at stupid sites, we kept within one another’s line of sight; Andrew stuck predominantly to Kevin, but I didn’t have any wish to die without fulfilling my promise to my mother, so I stuck close to them. If anything, they made for good watch-dogs: Andrew with his aggressive protectiveness, Kevin with his rabbit’s anxiety about Wesninski and Moriyama._ _

__The latter was another reason we kept stopping, I thought. I wasn’t stalling. Kevin was._ _

__( _Mother must be rolling in her---_ )_ _

__Eventually we curved down through Alabama and its twisting, forested roads, chasing the summer heat and keeping off the straight path. It didn’t matter. They found us. Honestly, I was impressed it took them that long. Honestly, I wondered if it had taken them this long, or if they’d waited until we were closer to Baltimore so they wouldn’t have to haul me too far._ _

__Late summer settled in Alabama with blanket humidity: without wind rushing through the windows, every stop threatened to boil the dark automobile and its inhabitants alive. Still, we needed gas. The station we ended up at had once been a way-station for buggy repair, watering troughs and posts to tie your horse to lining a rusted tin wall; its pumps shined, too new and too obviously outside of the owner’s full comprehension. It was the only station for forty miles, or so it advertised-- we hadn’t seen another living soul for close to twenty-five miles, so we believed it, and a lightly buzzed Andrew pulled us in. In the last town, we’d stocked enough food and water to last us until Georgia, but the prospect of not pissing against a tree spurred Kevin into wandering for the building. The gas attendant, all smiles and cheer, directed him the right way, and then moved around back to fuel up our tank._ _

__I slouched in my seat, army cap pulled low. The train through Colorado had been at once beautiful and terrible: every person whose eyes lingered had kick-started my heart into overdrive, including my new travel companions. After close to two months with them, I grew sloppy. I had a knife and Romero’s gun on me, my eyes low and ears tuned to the gas nozzle clanging into place, everything in me waiting to get back on the road._ _

__A car pulled up behind us, a single, tan skinned man driving one hell of a beat up jalopy. He flipped through his cheque book as he waited for the attendant._ _

__Kevin came back, shoving in at my side. The gas finished fueling. The attendant leaned close to the window and told Andrew he’d need to pay inside, that he didn’t have change for a ten. Andrew shrugged and went inside. The building didn’t have a door, and he remained visible through the entrance-way, Kevin and me within his line of sight the whole way._ _

__I saw him glance away for one moment to set the cash on the counter. Then I heard the door-handle click, and the gas attendant took his place in the driver’s seat, his smile cheery and fake, the glint of a pistol in his hand, and I shoved Kevin _hard_ to the side, my hand reaching for my own gun while I hoped the force would pop open the passenger door. It did with a crack--- and a woman hopped in, pushed Kevin back, and, arm around his throat in an expert choke hold, one hand braced against his head as if she were-- _because she was_ ready to snap his neck, took a seat right on his lap._ _

__“Ah, ah,” she tittered, and my blood ran cold, my uncle’s words in my ears, _get Lola out of Baltimore_ , “c’mon, honey, what’s the rush?” _ _

__The car sputtered and kicked at being forced to move so suddenly and so quickly, but it tore out of the station all the same, the jalopy that had been behind us screeching to follow. Over my shoulder, I saw a blond race out of the way-station, faster than I’d ever seen him move before; then the second car and its burly occupant blocked the view, and it was Kevin and me and Lola and the end of the rope._ _

__The former gas attendant suggested I drop my gun. Lola grinned at me, her nails pressing white crescents against a frozen, stock-still Kevin’s cheek. His eyes met mine, little pin-pricks of terror, and I knew he remembered every story and every sight his sponsor had ever told him._ _

__I dropped the gun._ _

__She laughed, a high, mean sound, not unlike what a hyena might laugh like. The man to my side kicked the gun to her corner, his own jabbed under my ribs. “Ooh, junior, I missed you. Lucky for us, we have a while to get re-acquainted - I wouldn’t want to waste a second of it.”_ _

__I breathed against the muzzle at my diaphragm. The humid air pressed in, an oppressive heat that the roaring wind couldn’t clear._ _

__She bidded Kevin not to speak, then produced a pair of handcuffs from her purse and wrenched his arms back to cuff them, then gagged and hooded him. Then she turned her attention to me -- pressed my head between my knees, cuffed my hands, transferred herself from Kevin’s lap to mine, took a moment to shove Kevin down and tell him to stay down, and then settled in like a sweetheart might, arm around my shoulders and make-up caked face not an inch away._ _

__“Hate the hair,” she purred into my ear, teeth snagging the lobe, “it’s going to have to go, and I can think of a few more improvements besides. Though I must say, you’ve grown up _fine_. Why, yes, junior, we’re going to be thick as thieves before I drop you off for your daddy.”_ _

__Kevin stayed down, barely in sight. I thought--- about nothing. About my father; about Lola and her knives, the scars on my stomach; about how pissed Andrew was going to be._ _

__I said, “Where’s Romero?”_ _

__For a moment her smile dropped, her face shuttered, her eyes widened an inch._ _

__Then she laughed again, a low chuckle deep in the chest, and shifted to straddle me. In my periphery: the unmistakable gleam of a curved blade._ _

__“Let’s start with that pretty little mouth.”_ _

__Fingers bit into my cheeks until my jaw opened. Metal laid my tongue flat, then nipped at the soft of my cheek. Its tip traced over canines and molars, and found the pits where wisdom teeth had been pulled. I tried to hold still. The jitney bumped and bridled over rocky, unpaved roads. The tip slipped between tooth and gum, copper welled, and I jerked, writhed, and it bit, and cut, and tore, and Lola hummed as if it was a pity, it was all a pity._ _

__Day fell into night._ _

__She left my tongue alone but plucked out two teeth. I spat shreds of pink tissue while she sat back and wiped her knife on my jacket sleeve. My chest heaved, hair plastered to my forehead, aborted screams in my throat, vision blurry and thoughts taken apart._ _

__“Who sent you, junior?” She asked, a hand holding me up by the shoulder. I shook my head, my mouth stretched, raw, clumsy, _on fire._ I can’t close my mouth all the way without throbbing pain opening it again. A shake to my shoulder lolled my head back; warmed metal pressed under an eye, and I choked back a sob. “Sixteen years, and your mother finally slips up in Seattle. It costs the bitch her life, but you _happen_ to meet up with Kevin Day and begin moseying your way home. Bit suspicious, I think.” She didn’t sound like she thought this was a bad thing. “Who sent you?”_ _

__Tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, I shook my head._ _

__She tsked. “Come on. Use your words.” The knife sliced so clean on my cheek, it left little less than fire in its wake._ _

__“No one,” I choked out._ _

__She tsked again. “Wrong answer.”_ _

__She pulled me forward into the mockery of an embrace, my chin hooked over her shoulder -- I must’ve drooled blood all over her black dress, but that was a small note of a panicked mind as she pulled up my sleeves and set her knife to my palms._ _

__“You just have to tell me who, Nathaniel,” she whispered to me as she cut fire into thin skin. “Tell me who sent your mother and you to our doorstep, tell me who left you to die like dogs,” blade poked under a nail and I screamed, thrashed, her legs clamped around my hips and her cool cheek pressed hard against mine, “ _why_ they believed for a moment that the pair of you could lay a hand on _us,_ ” and the driver smoked, had been smoking, he puffed the familiar scent into the sweltering air, he passed over his cigarette and bulky Ronson lighter when she extended a hand from her craftsmanship, and flesh cooked and pork mixed with smoke and it took a ragged mind time to process the smell belonged to me._ _

__“No one! No one sent us!” My words were half-garbled. I clung to it: clung to Neil Josten, another fabricated name on another cross-country journey, because Hatford said _the Butcher is old news_ and I wanted him to succeed more than anyone but it smelled like his sister in this car and I couldn’t see anything but tangled black. “We fucked up! We fucked up, she died, I ran, that’s it, that’s the story, that’s everything, _no one sent us!_ ”_ _

__On and on and on._ _

__At some point, she paused; I collapsed into her, coughed around blood and smoke. For a moment, she let me, and slowly, I became aware that she ran a hand up and down my back, like my mother never had. Then they tangled into my hair - that was more familiar - and pulled me back, her lips at the corner of mine. “I don’t believe you.”_ _

__And she started again, zagging up my arms with cuts drawn deeper and deeper, lighter providing messy, impromptu cauterization._ _

__The day fell into night and the night didn’t end._ _

__The car had to run out of gas eventually, but I convinced myself it never would as I turned myself into Neil Josten, molded reality to follow his story, _no one sent us, we were in Canada, Romero and Jackson got lucky, we were headed to California, Day is a coincidence, please, it wasn’t anyone else_._ _

__Change entered my awareness piece by piece: her stilling, first -- the lack of movement under me, second -- her shifting off me, finally. By then I’d no tears left, and without something to hold me up, I fell, the hard cushion bliss and smoldering coals._ _

__“He’ll be fine. Pack him up.”_ _

__“What about the other one?”_ _

__“The Moriyama brat requested him. Anyway, he’ll think twice about what he’s heard before he starts being a problem.”_ _

__“Yes’m.”_ _

__“Burn the extra shit, too. They won’t be needing it.”_ _

__“Yes’m.”_ _

__A sticky, wet hand ruffled my hair. “Tootles, junior! Be good, now - we’ll be seeing each other again very soon.”_ _

__Rough hands hauled me out by the arms. I fought for consciousness without knowing why, understanding without thought that Nathan was the next stop and as horrific as Lola had been he would be much, much worse. But it didn’t matter -- I could barely keep my feet under me, my eyes cracked open to the fuzzy image of a plane, and then whoever dragged me tossed me into a metal container - I hit something soft at the back - and it took everything in me not to give in to the dark. I saw the driver’s face and the burly man, a stretching field behind them; they shut the hatch, and I saw nothing._ _

__I’d struggled until the handcuffs dug as deep into my wrists as her knife had, with the knowledge -- _the certainty_ \- that if this plane took off with me in it, that was it. _ _

__(It already felt like the end, my mother’s ashes burned into my own flesh, but my father represented a force larger than my comprehension, and I didn’t question it)._ _

__I forced myself to my knees, my head bumping the ceiling and forcing me to keep low. As if drunk, I shuffled my way to the hatch, shoved my shoulder against it. It clanged, but barely. I had no strength. I fell to my side, gave it a kick. It clanged, louder, but still not enough. It turned out I had tears left in me, though no sound came: I was done, this was it, there was nothing left to do. My lungs wouldn’t work. I moved to my stomach, forehead pressed against the metal, eyes squeezed shut despite there being no difference, gasped around nothing but pain, and quietly broke down._ _

__The something soft proved to be another body, and it blindly shifted until it bumped into me with a little too much force. I keened, whatever air I had left put behind it, low and morose and anguished, because that was what animals did when they were dying. Some distant part of me recognized Kevin at my shoulder, unwavering at last, but it was too far, too little, too late. Around us, rumbling to rival a dozen cars began. We both fell, the metal slippery from my blood, as the plane made its way forward._ _

___No planes_ , Andrew had said. I agreed. God above, I agreed._ _

__The plane slowly eked its way to whatever I supposed worked as its runway. It stalled there, our narrow world shaking and jumping like the bolts felt bad and wanted to fall apart for us, and I wondered why I hadn’t taken Kevin up on his offer about boxing, since either way, this was where I was destined to be._ _

__I’d flown before only once, when Hatford sent a personal plane to fetch us from France. It’d been a rickety wooden thing, not at all like this metal innovation. You’d think you’d know when your feet left the ground, but we stalled so long on the runway, my arms and mouth and body ached so badly, I was sure the plane could lift off without me noticing a thing. It was so loud in the narrow space they’d shoved us into. The world could end outside, and I would neither know nor particularly care._ _

__Without a sound, the hatch popped open; a rush of fresh air, makeshift and flickering run way lights breaking up the dark, the sound no longer echoing and pressing around us; and I, still pressed against it, tumbled out._ _

__Someone short and male caught me and, after pulling me away from the plane to cooler grass, lowered me to the ground with a terrifying gentleness. Then he was gone, and I struggled up to see, hissing and cursing when my hands brushed the ground. _Run_ , my memories reminded me. _Get up, go._ But my body locked up, and I I watched, and thought I recognized the figure, especially as he dug into the hatch and tore off a hood and checked over a dazed, red-eyed and bloody-lipped Kevin before helping him down, too. Lola, the driver and the burly man were nowhere to be seen. The plane’s propeller continued spinning, its engine an impatient roar. Kevin stumbled to me; he fell more than he knelt, his legs undoubtedly cramped up. I managed to sit up, the wind whipping my hair over my eyes. A blink, and Andrew put himself between us, one shaking hand on Kevin’s shoulder and the other at my nape. He had a gash along his temple, dried blood smeared down his face, another spray that I foggily realized might not be his splattered across his vest. Blank-faced, I couldn’t reconcile the shake in his hands with emotion or pain. He was startlingly clear-eyed as he looked me over, the hand on my neck squeezed for one-two beats before releasing, and it was just us, just the three of us, no Lola, no driver, no fire, no blades, and _of course_._ _

__They knew about Kevin Day and Nathaniel Wesninski._ _

__They hadn’t a clue about Andrew Minyard._ _


	10. NEIL JOSTEN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **warnings:** ....... none! holy shit!! holy shit!!!! finally, a breather. ish.

“Stuart. Welcome.”

In a tan three-piece and brown oxfords, the British man cut an upright and tense picture on the white marble foyer. Robin’s eyes flitted between us, her head kept low as she took his hat and jacket and hurried for the closet. Stuart Hatford had never been one to dally; generally straight-forward, generally ambitious, and generally clever, he knew his time’s worth and made sure not to waste it. But some things were too direct and raw to handle right out of the oven even for him - and for that reason, aged lines drew his mouth down and wrinkled his forehead.

“Neil,” he returned, looking me up and down as if he couldn’t believe how much I’d grown when I hadn’t technically gained an inch, “you’re looking good.”

“Compared to the last time you saw me, maybe,” I couldn’t help quipping. The corners of his mouth darkened. _Good._ He knew why he was here, and it wasn’t anything so well-meaning as a family reunion. “Why don’t you come in? Robin will fetch us tea.”

“I prefer coffee, actually.”

“Oh.” Without a shred of apology. “I forgot.”

Given how easily he followed, his oxfords sounding hollow on the polished floors, I was willing to bet he didn’t know I knew why he was here. In fact, I had bet he didn’t know--- and at the end of the night, I would be six dollars richer. We took to the sitting room. I sat, he stood. When his eyes flickered over my shoulder and everything in his person seized up in shock, I knew Andrew had appeared at the doorway, most likely doing his best _hair-trigger thug waiting for you to fuck up_ impression, thus inspiring the perfect amount of fear and uncertainty about what he could be thinking. Nicky told me that he was very good at it, while Andrew said the only reason I couldn’t pick up on it was because I had the self-preservation instincts of a brain-dead fish (not because he never aimed it at me, but I knew what he meant).

Maybe both were true, but I’d long learned it didn’t matter what I thought. It mattered what impression others received-- and tonight, what Hatford walked away thinking mattered _the most._

His eyes tarried on Andrew for a moment too long-- he’d met Minyard before, and the glance raised a small flag in the back of my mind--, but a blink and it was back to him and me. Maybe he did know what I knew, and thought Andrew wouldn’t let him walk out. No. That didn’t make sense.

I didn’t bother telling him to take a seat. At this point, hypothetically, he was one rung up from me. I’d save tipping the ladder for after he said his piece. It was only fair.

“Perhaps we could speak alone,” he said, which was quite bold. Then again, he probably fancied that I owed him. He’d kept my mother and I safe for four years. House-arrest had meant little when placed in the lap of luxury.

Affecting an edge that _should_ have been confused but instead came out sharp, because what I told my mouth to do and what it actually did rarely coincided ( _brain-dead fish_ , Andrew’s stare said), “I didn’t realize matters were that grave.”

Stuart’s mouth thinned into a flat, white line.

Quiet as a mouse, Robin delivered our drinks to the dark coffee table. I focused on her, shifting one leg to hook over the other, “Would you mind closing the doors after you, Robin?” She did, barely a whisper in the wind, though she’d come running the moment she heard our discussion head south. She was good like that. 

“When I said alone, Neil, I meant it.” Stuart brought my gaze back. He huffed as I stayed silent and Andrew didn’t budge, a little puff of unamused air. He looked softer after that, like the uncle he’d never managed to be. “You were always so stubborn.”

The corner of my mouth raised. “It’s in the Hatford blood.”

He chuckled, shoulders loosening. His sister would do that. “I’m afraid I’ve bad news from our mutual employer.” 

“Really? There haven’t been any major changes. I can’t see what could be causing an issue.”

“It’s been five months, and given how many ships leave the docks, the new mills’ profits have been… awfully low.”

“That seems like an issue with accounting, not me.”

“Hemmick was never meant to leave this city.” 

I shrugged, unconcerned. “As far as I know, he hasn’t.”

“Neil.” At this Stuart’s voice dropped, expression caught somewhere between _you’re being a fool_ and _don’t make me do this, son_. Pity for him that I’d never a good relationship with my father -- the vaguest implication that he saw me, the one he’d locked in a room for two weeks after my second attempt at running, as a _son_ , started my anger at a low simmer. “Last period, Eden’s Twilight was terribly compromised. You should have cut the liability from your name, but instead you invested good money in keeping it afloat.”

_How forward._

Sneering was a near thing. I held back only by focusing on the pull of my scar, my tongue running over the pits in my mouth.

“Oh. Was that inconvenient for him?”

Stuart’s cool chipped, and he glared. “What do you think you’re playing at? Are you looking to lose everything you’ve worked for?“

“I think I’ve been had.” I kept still, unblinking and voice level. “For years I’ve worked within his rules, four years I’ve kept his men in line after the Butcher’s death, but Riko continues to play.”

“You know what happens to Riko isn’t for you or me to decide.”

“He sent a doctor to _my home_.”

Stuart’s eyes darted over my shoulder. 

It was doubtful that Andrew gave him any sign to work with, but he was right on the money, and he _knew_ , and my blood boiled. The heat pulled my mouth into a slow-spreading smile, the dead tissue twisting my left side the wrong way. “He caused my best man to spend a season locked in a mad house, incited the police to investigate _me_ for sodomy, and business suffered for it. If revenue is running low, it’s because of Riko’s reckless arrogance. He’s a loose cannon with a bone to pick, and he doesn’t care about the fall-out. His brother knows it. His brother should have done something about it long before Eden’s Twilight was compromised.”

“We can’t be sure--”

“If I can’t trust Ichirou to cut his loose ends, I don’t see why I should expect his empire to last.”

_If he won’t protect my people no matter the rules I follow, I won’t bow my head._

My uncle had enough experience under his belt not to let his surprise or disdain show on his face. A muscle jumped in his jaw, but otherwise he kept his spine straight and drew himself back into a figure of absolute composure. An old man past his prime, the wisdom suited him. It didn’t impress me a lick. 

“He will run you into the ground, Nathaniel,” Hatford told me, my real name meant as a lash but falling flat before it could reach my back. Nathaniel had been dead for years - since Lola, since the plane, since my father’s home burned to the ground. That Hatford thought it meant anything proved just how out of touch he was. “He’s gracious enough to give you a chance to repent. I won’t tell him what you said - I owe your mother that much.“

It was hard not to laugh at him when he said something like _that._

“Lick his boots, and it’ll be alright? I thought we did business as men, not dogs.”

 _Ichirou’s feeling threatened_ , Andrew had told me the night before. Hatford hadn’t sent word that he planned to show up, but Renee had passed on Moreau’s last words, and I knew then and there that it would be at the worst possible time (as it turned out, he arrived moments before we were supposed to leave for one of Dan’s parties). _You’re becoming unpredictable._

_By your estimation, I’ve always been an unpredictable madman._

_And you are, but he didn’t realize what that meant._

I’d hummed, my head in his lap and his arm a comfortable weight across my chest. When I didn’t reply, he’d given the strands a sharp tug - I’d opened my eyes just enough to peer up at him, the conversation’s seriousness floating somewhere outside of our quiet moment.

_What?_

Another tug until I focused fully on him, his words a growl. _I swore I’d kill you._

Oh, was that all.

 _Yeah, I remember,_ I’d said, and turned my head to nuzzle his thigh. He looked like he wanted to shove me off, but in typical Andrew Minyard fashion, how he looked contradicted what he did, and soon enough he hauled me up by my collar, and any thoughts about Ichirou Moriyama evaporated into the night.

Back in the daylight, in the here and now, Hatford at last gave word to what had been on his mind since he’d walked through the door. “Don’t be a fool, Neil. Repent. He’s asking for no more than what is his due: the missing revenue with a ten percent interest, the charges against Riko dropped with a public apology, and Day’s immediate retirement. Hemmick can run his campaign out, but he’ll be under my management, not yours.”

One eyebrow raised, my smile hitched up even further. “I don’t recall any previous complaints about Kevin’s career.” 

Caught between what he had to say and how he knew I’d take it, Stuart fell silent. 

“The odds are Riko’s favor.” He finally said, his hands loose at his sides. “Day’s washed up.”

“He’s been doing well so far. You should see a match while you’re here - it’s almost like he never lost a finger.”

Stuart’s expression snapped shut. His hand twitched.

And his eyes shot over my shoulder, the whole of him rigid with newfound tension. 

“I wouldn’t do that, uncle,” I said into the ensuing quiet, my smile gone. “Your reflexes aren’t what they used to be.”

His face twisted up, but I had no need for the emotion it showed.

“Tell our employer I won’t be meeting his demands, as they’re horribly unfair. If he wants to negotiate further, perhaps we can meet for dinner. There’s a wonderful place on the bay that serves excellent lobster.”

“Neil,” my uncle tried. “Don’t do this.”

“My schedule’s wide open. I’ll be waiting to hear from him.”

“ _Neil_. Reconsider.”

He cared about me. Maybe. The idea of me, at least, or how my shoulders sloped like his sister’s.

“That’s what I pleaded when you asked me to visit my father’s house after you left us in California to die. That’s how Moreau begged when I caught on to his real master.” I paused. He swallowed, and paid me the grace of not denying the words. “I think you should go, uncle. Blood runs thin in this house.”

He left without a word, gathering his coat and jacket, his coffee left untouched on the table. 

“He knew something,” Andrew said after the slammed door stopped echoing through the first floor. I caught sight of Robin loitering in the doorway; with a flick of my fingers, my expression tired and apologetic, she left. “He knew you’re stupid enough to go against Ichirou, so he came prepared for a fight.”

There was a whole lot Stuart Hatford probably knew, but he hadn’t known we’d be prepared for his arrival, and he hadn’t expected me to deny him. None of those things could be what Andrew referred to, or he wouldn’t have wasted breath on saying it. I sat back into the chair, my legs uncrossed and feet flat on the floor. He rounded its edge to flop on the couch, tommy gun dropped carelessly at his side, and reached for Hatford’s coffee. “Prepared with more than what he said?”

A nod and sip, pause, and reach for the sugar cubes. Three later, stirred until the liquid lightened, and he lounged back again. I took the time to fetch my own cup.

“He came here with a better leverage than Ichirou’s name. Something much, much bigger.”

Good, because he should have known better than to think that would’ve been enough. No name held as much weight as Nathan Wesninski, and that one lay stale and cold in this house’s foundation.

 _Bad_ , because-- “Why didn’t he use it?”

At this Andrew’s head tilted, his eyes unfocused on the wall.

I waited until I saw the darkness creep across his face, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since the first time he’d met my uncle. I’d been laid out on a hospital bed, my right hand bandaged but already bled-through, the left half of my face entirely covered in gauze, and my uncle, the cause of it all, misguided in thinking _I_ was the one Andrew wanted to murder.

Quickly I sat up, tea forgotten. “Andrew?”

Just then: Robin knocked on the door and poked her head in, her expression heavy with worry. “Sirs? Sorry to interrupt, but Ms. Wilds is on the private line.”

“I’m going to _gut_ Nicky,” Andrew promised, and I scrambled for the phone.


	11. DAN WILDS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **warnings:** homophobia and implied suicidal impulses. :( it was good while it lasted.

Five days before that shit-stain’s trial, _of course_ we were gonna celebrate.

The Foxhole, bless her creaky, weepy, leaky old heart, bounced with how many people turned up. Foxes brought friends brought friends brought relatives brought someone’s mangy mutt, a brown-and-black drool factory that received a place of honor on a coveted bar stool before it put its dirty paws on Allison’s new fur-laced coat and I kicked it out to save its skin. Assuring Allison her coat was safe wasn’t necessary, as I returned to find her extorting the owner for damage. 

“Do you know who I am?” I nearly lost it when she said that. She actually said that! The owner shook his head, caught her look, reconsidered, and dug for his wallet. She looked pretty happy after that, even if the bright red coat sported a new black streak down one arm. Eyeing the flush across her cheeks, I imagined it’d take a lot more than one mucky mutt to bring her mood down.

The whole thing made me laugh, my head a pleasantly fuzzy place. Normally I wouldn’t drink on the job, but this was -- this was a little different. 

Renee delivered word to Allison that our rat had been exterminated. Allison then told me. I, from the goodness of my heart,, told Matt we needed a celebration, because whatever Jean Moureau cost us that we weren’t getting back, I wasn’t letting him keep us down. Matt had agreed, then pointed out we had five days until Kevin took the stand against Riko and he was undoubtedly falling apart as we spoke, so I sent a scuffy urchin off with a letter for Wymack to take a night off and _please, bring Abby!_ Naturally, I phoned up my old stage sisters, asking them if they wouldn’t mind doing an impromptu show even though we hadn’t proper lighting or a piano man or much of anything, to which they enthusiastically agreed. Then I delivered myself to Kevin’s favored gym and dragged his dead-eyed ass out at the last second so he couldn’t say no, and that covered everybody important, because really, no one else needed convincing. Put a sign out front for _Discount Day!_ and every smuck off the street wandered in for a cup. 

Wymack walked in right on the dot with Abby a step behind. She gave me a kiss on the cheek, told me I was looking fine, and he nodded in his gruff way that I appreciated awfully, then those two went to nab spots from some regulars who didn’t know better than to scramble away Wymack came around. I saw Kevin make his way over eventually, extracting himself from what I knew had to be his groupies. If you weren’t awe-struck by his reputation, it wasn’t hard to see he was drunker than a skunk. The party was barely hitting its stride -- he definitely wouldn’t remember most of the night. Maybe that’d help with Wymack and him talking. God knows those two could be handcuffed for a year and they wouldn’t look each other in the eye.

I had five dollars running on two weeks more before Kevin went over to Wymack’s place for dinner like any other bullish, cotton-headed son. That trial was gonna change things.

Renee and Allison disagreed with seven dollars each, but they couldn’t _always_ be right.

The din - a jazz band included, _bless my sisters’ hearts_ \- threatened to blow out my ears. I loved it.

It might’ve been good fun, and I might’ve been buzzed, but I was still matron of this fine establishment. Dogs - four legged and two legged - aside, it fell to me to keep an eye on who I could, which really meant I kept an eye out for who _wasn’t_ hanging around.

If Renee showed up late and kept to herself more than usual, I wasn’t gonna press it. I mixed her up a tall cherry syrup and Dr. Pepper, and clinked my champagne against her in a silent toast, told her to take her time, that we foxes would be around as always when she was ready, and then I left her well alone. She’d been friendlier than her usual with watching Moureau boy; he was scum, if you asked me, and not worth the time his mama put into him, but I hadn’t thought that before he turned out as our rat and I wasn’t bigoted enough to expect Renee to have been much different. If anything, it was a little reassuring to see her hold on to her heart.

Last I’d saw, she’d picked herself up and put herself next to Allison, their heads bowed together in what looked like _far_ too somber conversation. But oi, I wasn’t Nicky _can’t keep his mouth shut to save his life_ Hemmick, I knew how to give space. 

For example: I took the space between Matt and me, and closed it up real nice. 

“Hey, you,” he said, that sap, twisting with a little to see me over his shoulder, “where’s Nicky?”

Not exactly what a girl wanted to hear after tucking her hands into her man’s pockets, but I’d rolled with worse. 

“Dunno,” I hummed, setting my chin on his shoulder. “He said he was coming. Allison swears he’s got a date and everything.”

The fella between my arms rumbled with a laugh, Matt leaning back into me. “Ooh, I hope he wasn’t planning on this being his first date. I don’t know how we won’t scare her off.” 

“This isn’t his first party, and you saw how he dances. That boy’s got a wild streak somewhere.”

Matt twisted around to face me and tucked a smile into my hair. He sort of had to stay close - I’d met him in the space we’d cleared for dancing, though the sheer amount of bodies kept the swingers from doing much swinging.

“Maybe you should give him a ring?” My fiance said, which was even less what I wanted to hear. I sighed into his mouth. He smiled back, because he was a scamp and scoundrel and right as usual. I pulled away after a few more kisses, giving him a playful shove in the chest when he gave me puppy-dog eyes. As if this wasn’t his suggestion!

“Alright, alright! Don’t lose your head while I’m gone.” 

“Ask him about his cousins, too. I didn’t expect him to let them miss this, if nothing else!”

I waved him off as I weaved toward the back room, stopping here and there along the way because I was the matron and people were having a good time and, damn it, I was gonna strangle that pompous politician if he hadn’t left his house yet. _Ironically_ , all that chit-chat was just about the only reason I was still in the main room when he _did_ show up, a pale but strong-looking woman done up in a nice little red dress on one arm. 

The regulars I could chat with anytime. This boy, I wanted to give him a piece of my mind for making us wonder - he did that enough already, what with all the run-around he’d given us when the boss had first introduced us. There’d been no telling if he’d had an issue because we weren’t white or if he was naturally that fumbling when he wasn’t under the camera; in a pleasant turn of events, it turned out to be the latter. “Nicky! Where have you been? The party’s been hopping for hours!”

“Sorry, sorry,” he said in a voice very unlike his usual. It sent my eyebrows crawling toward my hairline. “Traffic, you know. Ah, this is Laila. Laila, Dan Wilds, the hostess of this incredible party-- did you know we can hear the band from clear down the block?”

“Pleased to meet you,” she said, her hand stuck out for me to shake. I did and rattled off the expected pleasantries, but my attention kept to Nicky, my eyes narrowing at him as he went on.

“Where’s your cousins?” 

Nicky shifted under my gaze, a bit of his normal, less pasted-on-smile self coming out. Laila, meanwhile, raised her eyebrows between us.

“Erik, he came down with food poisoning. It’s _nasty._ He can barely leave the bathroom for an hour at a time, and the amount of towels the maid has gone through--”

I scrunched up my nose. I didn’t believe him a lick, something else was up, but, “Okay, okay, _I want to eat soon_ , don’t be gross. What about your other one?”

Nicky blinked, as if two cousins were one too many to keep track of. That was closer to the Nicky I knew. “What other one?”

Unfortunately, that was _very_ close to the Nicky I knew.

“ _Aaron?_ You know, the stuffy one?”

“Isn’t he here?”

Uuh.

“No. I’ve been here all night, and I know he hasn’t walked through that door.”

Laila’s arm tightened around Nicky’s, her shift of weight betraying awkwardness.

“That was-- that was another reason we were so late,” Nicky babbled. “We were waiting on him to show up. When hours passed, we figured he’d come early with Matt.”

I believed that excuse. Aaron didn’t go anywhere without an escort, though he probably didn’t even realize he was under watch. The boss himself demanded it shortly after his arrival--- well, to be accurate, the boss had _suggested_ we keep a close eye on him, and it made enough sense that none of us had questioned it. The guy had Andrew’s face, for fuck’s sake. Even without the skittishness Seth’s death had left us with, looking like Aaron did was bound to have him run into trouble.

But. Wait. “Where did you think he was before now?”

Nicky gave me a weird look and repeated, “With Matt. He left for a job this morning.”

Again, Laila shifted. I felt a little bad for her being dropped in like this - she had to be vetted and deemed clean to be on Nicky’s arm, no way was she why Aaron wasn’t around - but there wasn’t anything to be done about it. “Right. I’m going to get a drink,” she told Nicky, who nodded while barely looking at her. She detached herself from him and disappeared behind us.

I stepped neatly into her place, putting on a smile for those around us and a little bow of my head, as if I were appreciating his advice on some shop matter. “Matt wasn’t scheduled to meet with him today. Matt’s been here, helping me set up.”

Realization came to Nicky in stages - while I might’ve been convincingly pleasant and interested, he went from confusion to pure worry.

“Nicky,” I said, to stave off panic for the both of us, “where’s Aaron been all day?”

“He left this morning,” he insisted, whole body rigid with tension. “I didn’t see it personally, I-- I was helping Erik with his food poisoning--”

“Drop the bullshit, Hemmick. _What happened?_ ”

“-- the car that pulled in matched Matt’s, I thought it was Matt, didn’t think anything of it, the butler answered the door, Aaron must have went with!”

“Are you telling me Minyard got abducted right under your nose?”

You could see the pin drop in Nicky’s eyes. All at once, he looked close to tears.

“Whoa, whoa, hold on, breathe, _breathe._ ” I put a light hand on his back, gripped his upper arm and gave him a light shake to cut off his babbling, words about _Andrew said if I lost him again_ and _Laila was_ and _Erik won’t_ and _we just started talking again_. Damn, but it was ugly to see him lose it. Whatever buzz I’d had was officially gone, and there was no way the people around us thought we were having a friendly chat. “Let’s go to the back and talk, alright?” His eyes near bugged out of his skull, his whole face going pasty white and words dying in his throat with a squeak. I winced, quickly amended, “You and me. I swear. No one else. We’ll see if we can’t piece this together before the night’s up, and then it can stay between you and me.”

He didn’t look like he fully believed me, but he let me half-lead, half-drag him through the crowd to the back. I moved as if he were sick and needed the restroom; when Matt caught my eye, his hand raised and a grin on his face that froze once he really saw Nicky, I shook my head at him to _stay_ and pulled the backroom door shut tight behind us.

Whatever had kept Nicky upright and moving went out of him in a rush once he sat on a crate. Fat tears rolled down pink-stained cheeks, and his babbling turned into apologies for the scene he was making, and gratitude for my help, all his words garbled behind snot and absolute, bone-deep misery. I’d never seen a man break down so thoroughly without a gun to his head. I let him cry himself out, if only because otherwise there was no way I’d understand what he had to say. I fetched him the beer he liked out of a crate, the expensive, imported craft from Germany, twisting off its cap and passing it over when it sounded like he had enough breath to drink.

Eventually he did, with such gratitude that he almost choked on it. I did not think about Seth.

“At least we don’t have to go through reasons why someone _would_ want to kidnap him,” I began, trying for gentle and coming up way short. Gentle was Matt’s thing, not mine. Nicky didn’t seem to mind, or even notice - he nodded with more of that misery, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket to blow his nose. “More important is _who_ would know to nab him. Who all knows he’s living with you?”

Nicky’s shrug dripped with despondency. “You, Matt, Kevin, Andrew, the boss. Renee. Erik. Laila, probably. My staff...”

I winced. Yeah, okay, I could see why he’d expected me to take him out back and put him down.

“But we were always careful.” Puffy red eyes leaped up to catch mine, tears balanced precariously on the edges. “I swear, please, you have to believe me. He never went anywhere alone! He only used the phone to call his wife. I… I… What jobs is he even running?”

“Nothing beyond paperwork.” The crate sagged under our combined weight, me settling delicately next to him and stretching an arm around his shoulders. I hadn’t known what to do with the tears too well, but I wasn’t heartless: he looked like he could use a hug. _This_ he minded, sagging against me and looking for all the world like a wrung-up rag. “Matt’s foxes know him, but otherwise... “ He didn’t go anywhere. And the boss had said - Renee had said -- Jean was our snake, not Frank or Davie or Fernando or even Jack. It didn’t make sense.

The party’s cacophony pounded against the door, and I swear they were mocking me. As usual, it’d all been going _grand_ until a Minyard showed up, in person or not.

(I’d wondered if the boss would show his face-- the monster always tagged along then- but it didn’t ruffle me that he didn’t. He celebrated on his own time just like he grieved on his own time, and vastly preferred small groups, besides.)

Nicky kept huddling against me like I was going to fight off the world for him. No, wait - a glance proved that false. He huddled against me like he didn’t have anything else in the world he could do, like he’d flat-out given up right then and there. For a fella so full of personality, it was jarring, to say the least.

“Oi.” I gave him a nudge after that blank look lasted too long for my nerves. For the first time, I was seeing his blood relation to those blondies. It had me saying things I didn’t know we had a chance on, but that was always how these incidents went. And we were foxes, damn it: we survived. “Buck up. It’s going to be fine. Baltimore isn’t that big; they can’t hide a Minyard from us for long.”

Never mind that with twelve hours and the airfields built three hours from the city, Aaron could easily be a state or two over.

A ragged breath, and--- he didn’t push himself to his feet, but he slumped down on his own power, only our legs left touching. I eyed him, thoughts a mess, fighting for something to focus on.

Well. Thus far, it was just me and him. So. Might as well start with him.

“Nicky.” He didn’t move. “ _Nicky._ ” An under-the-breath, unintelligible mumble. With a growl behind my words, “ _NIcky, look at me._ ” He did, his tears dried up but eyes glassy. 

I did my job, see, but I wasn’t heartless, and I never would be, and I didn’t want to be, and Nicky was a fox, funny egg or not. More than a few times, he proved to have a remarkable talent of over- and under-sharing at the absolute best time to shut down a chat, following up that stunning ability with a ceaseless look like he was the conversational victim. 

“You’re going to be fine.” I told him, hand snapping to angle his chin toward me when he tried to melt back into despondency. “It wasn’t your fault. We’ll find him, and it’ll turn out alright.”

He sniffed, whole face a wet mess.

I licked my lips, and considered a new-ish topic. “Andrew said he’d do what if you lost him again?” _There’s an ‘again?’ When was the first time?_

It took him a moment, eyes flitting everywhere from my face to the cramped, darkened walls, but he gathered himself enough to say, “I’m a dead man walking.”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

Misery no longer touched him. All his words, everything in his face, it was a whole lot of nothing. I dropped his chin, drew back a little. It was a look I’d seen before on bridges and balconies, and other places too high for humans to walk away from. “I’ve been for a while,” he said. Then, out of nowhere, “Seems like a hot party. Thanks for the invite, but I’m going home.”

“No, you’re not. We’re ringing the boss about this immediately.”

Still with that awful blankness, he shook his head. “I need to talk with Erik.” 

What was that? Oh, just me, sputtering, temper rising. My ears rang. “The hell are you going on about? That’s not the cousin you should be worrying about!” 

Finally, a crack in the stone: his face screwed up, mouth twisted scornfully. “We’re not even related.” He scoffed, and stood. 

I snagged his arm and yanked his ass back down.

“ _Not related?_ ” I hissed. For once, he didn’t flinch, instead leveling a look at me as if I was plain stupid. Biting back a protest, I shook my head clear. “Later. We are talking about that _later_. Right now, you are _cutting the melodrama_ , we’re going _together_ to Wymack’s office, and we’re ringing the boss, because both of us are dead meat if we sit on this any longer than we already have.”

He opened his mouth - I snapped my fingers in his face, and he jerked back, mouth closed.

“No arguments. You tell me when you’re ready to move, and we move.” He didn’t try to get up again, and though he still looked green at the gills, he wasn’t collapsed quite so much into himself. I counted it as good enough for agreement. Blowing out a breath, I scrubbed the heel of my hand into one eye, the ringing in my ears echoing into a pounding in my head. It was a good hour’s drive to Wymack’s office and his private line to the boss’s house. I needed to talk with Matt and Renee, give them the head’s up that the clean-up was on their shoulders, and then convince Wymack to hand us his keys without letting Abby know what was up. Minyard’s reaction was going to be unpredictably horrific. Laila would need a ride arranged without Nicky being the one to do it. My sisters were going to be so pissed on me ditching out before the after-party when they’d taken the time to get here.

God.

And to top it all off, Nicky kept looking like he wanted to blow his brains out into the bay.

I rubbed my eyes again, pinched the bridge of my nose.

“It’s going to be a long night.”

Nicky snorted, _no shit, Sherlock_ , and choked down the remainder of his beer.


End file.
